The Stupidest Rule

arbitrary dates of healing

144 Days.

That’s how long he was in my life. From our first date where we drank Old Fashioneds and I looked into crystal blue eyes for 3 hours to the day he ended things while on a walk in Candler Park and split my world apart.

144 Days.

To some that might seem like a short time. Compared to decades-long marriages, it’s laughable. Compared to most long term relationships, it’s just a spell. The earliest beginnings of courtship, the start of the dance. In the scope of human history, it’s not even a full blink of an eye. But for me that 144 days ignited a revolution. It changed everything - the way I saw myself, the way I saw the future, the way I saw what was possible.

That 144 days was enough time to go to nearly every restaurant on Buford Highway. It was enough time to exchange thoughtful Christmas presents and make plans for the future. During that time we walked Birdie a bunch and played tennis and took turns cooking dinner. We met for coffee dates and texted every day. That 144 days included back rubs and countless car make-out sessions and holding hands on his balcony. I met his inner circle of friends. He met my sisters. We had a weekend getaway to the mountains and talked on the phone when either of us were out of town. It included bottles of wine and pop-up bars on the Beltline. It included Wicked and Moonstruck and Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. We fit a lot into 144 days.

It was enough time for me to fall in love.

Falling in love was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. The whole experience was like floating down a river. The gentle current wrapping me up in warmth, happiness, safety, softly guiding me toward something, toward him. In 144 days I realized that I had never actually been in love before. Not really. Not in any real way. I’d had crushes and infatuations. I’d had sticky ‘situationships’ and flirtations. I’d had one night stands and fantasies. Every romantic or sexual pursuit previously had been one-sided or totally shallow or a construct of my imagination. For 35 years it was never love.

Until him.

On day 144, the end came for me. I never saw it coming. I can’t write about that part yet. That part, that one-hour long conversation in the park, is still too treacherous a place to go. It’s not safe for me there. It’s not safe in passing. It’s not safe in quiet moments of solitude. It’s certainly not safe to put into words that then get consumed by the world. Not yet.

That conversation was my undoing. That conversation, full of kind words and I’m sorry’s and hushed tones and hand holding and I care about you’s and flowing tears, was a psychic violence I’ve never experienced before. I kept my composure as best I could but a dam broke inside me. A tsunami of despair, grief, and torture followed. It was Day 1 of a sadness that has threatened to swallow me whole ever since.

That conversation, the concrete end of my 144-day journey, was exactly 70 days ago. On Sunday it will be 72 days ago. Half the amount of time we were together.

And according to the internet and “conventional wisdom” (whatever the hell that is) I should be done grieving by Sunday. Not only should I be done but that’s all I get. All I’m entitled to. It’s a longstanding Rule of Dating that one gets to mourn the end of a relationship for half the length of the relationship. 1-year relationship? You get to be sad for 6 months. 18-months? You get 9 to grieve. 10-year marriage? You get 5 before someone commits you to an asylum. At the halfway mark, it’s “time to move on.” Anything beyond that is pathological and immature and unhealthy and pathetic and unevolved.

As someone who stands on the precipice of that halfway mark, might I just say -

Fuck.

That.

Shit.

In the before times, before him, this advice always sounded right to me. The logic of half-the-time seemed appropriate. Grieve what needs grieving and then move on. Surely there was a correct amount of time to do this and an incorrect amount of time to do this. Grieve too little and you seem like an unfeeling lunatic. Grieve too much and you seem like a clingy lunatic. There’s a Goldilocks lunatic-free spot in the middle. Grounded, mature, healthy adults land in that spot.

Now that I’m on the other side, or on the “inside” I should say, I have questions. What constitutes “moved on?” What does it mean to be “over” something? Where is the endpoint of grief? How do we measure it? Is it just in behavior? Do I need to show everyone just how happy and totallycompletelyabsolutelytruly okay I really am? Do I have to start dating again? Is that my signal to the world that I’m okay? Or is it just internal? Is it that I don’t think about him any more? I don’t cry any more or feel the pain of the loss? I don’t miss him or long for what was?

If these questions have specific answers and if these answers all point to me being “over it” by Day 72, by Sunday, then I regret to inform everyone that I’m not on target to meet that goal. A lot can happen in two days but not that much.

The fact is that I am okay and I am not okay. I’m okay in the sense that I go to work and walk Birdie and get groceries and sleep through the night and go out with friends and make plans and watch TV and workout and listen to podcasts. There was a time, say 60 days ago, where that was not happening. I’m moving on in the sense that I keep moving. I’m in motion. My life keeps getting lived somehow. So by that metric, I am okay.

Last Friday I sobbed in my car for 15 minutes. That morning I helped my mom prune an overgrown camellia bush in her backyard. For over an hour I snipped and clipped away at unruly nature under the Georgia sun while sweat soaked my shirt. In the mundanity of repetitive action, my brain thought only of him. I thought of what happened and what it all meant. I thought about what he might be doing right now and if he ever thinks of me. I thought about all the moments and memories. I thought about what will never be. I thought of how unfair this was and how stupid I was for thinking it was my turn. I thought about how good it felt to be desired and wanted. I thought of my pain. I thought of how I may never look into those crystal blue eyes again or hear his voice or be held in his arms or taste his mouth or hear him breathe or hold his hand or feel his heartbeat. When I was done with the camellia I got in my car, drove two blocks, pulled over, and unleashed a torrent of sadness.

He continues to be the first thing I think about every morning, even before I open my eyes. He jumps into my brain throughout my entire day. Every day. Sometimes it’s gentle and fleeting. Sometimes it’s not. Somedays I can get distracted for hours at a time where thoughts of him are nowhere to be found. Somedays I can’t. I don’t cry that often but when I do, it’s intense. I talk about him with very few friends any more.

My best friend said something about grief that has resonated and proven itself to be brilliantly true. She said grief is not linear. It’s cyclical. You find yourself returning to the same spot over and over again. But every time you come back to the same spot, it’s a little different. You’re a little different. Maybe imperceptibly, but nevertheless different. These spots, these points of agony and pain and confusion, appear the tiniest bit softer or cooler or gentler each time you pass over them. Every time you return to a location, one you’ve been to a hundred or a thousand or a million times before, it’s a little bit more habitable. A little bit safer. You will keep coming back to these same spots over and over and over again…until you don’t. Those spots will get so worn down and tender that they eventually blend into the landscape of your life. They become part of the scenery. They won’t be totally indistinguishable from everything else but they’ll eventually require some effort to find.

With that, I’d like to propose a new post-breakup rule -

Leave time alone.

Instead of setting arbitrary deadlines for when amorphous “healing” goals need to be met, instead of counting down days until okayness is supposed to magically be achieved, instead of pathologizing sadness over something sad, instead of designating a specific time and place for grief, instead of hard and fast rules, what if we just accept the cyclical nature of grief and time? What if we acknowledge that time, in no pre-determined quantity, does the heavy lifting? What if we accept that we cannot control it? That it’s driving the ship and we are just a passenger? What if we try to move with rather than move on?

I’m willing to accept that some people might need harder rules. Putting parameters around grief might make someone feel safer while riding an otherwise perilous ride. Telling oneself that pain will be, needs to be, should be over on a certain day might be a lifeline while in the throes of sadness. And to them I say, keep on. You do you.

But for me? That won’t work. It hasn’t worked. I’ve dreaded getting to Day 72. This completely made-up moment in time has induced anxiety. I’ve felt its impending arrival for weeks because I knew I wouldn’t be there yet. I knew I won’t have made it to some magical place of ‘being healed.’ I knew that on Day 72 the end of my relationship would still affect me. It would still hurt.

But the beautiful thing is that Day 72 will feel different than Day 47, which felt different from Day 23, which felt different from Day 4, which felt different from that moment in Candler Park when everything came crashing down around me. And that, I’d like to believe, is proof positive of healing. It’s proof that time and grief and healing are doing their mysterious, unknowable dance together. Perhaps it’s best if I get out of their way and just watch.