First, I learned to breathe without you.
Then I
learned to live without you.
Finally, I
learned to love without you.
We’ve all been there, that
tragic, Earth stopping moment that the ‘love of your life’ tells you it’s over.
Your throat swells and it seems like hours and hours before you can breathe
again. But in reality, it’s seconds.
Yes, really. Seconds. Within
seconds of hearing that information, you’ve already learned (albeit you don’t
really process it then) that you can breathe without that individual in your
life.
You eventually accept,
though perhaps don’t like, that the relationship is over. And you spend hours
and hours during the nights crying alone in the dark. You try to carry on with
the day to day but everything seems to have her name on it or a reminder of
her. You see someone who looks like her and have to stop yourself staring. You
hear a song you both loved. You see a book you know she would love. You
experience a moment and wish she were there to share it. You’re not really
living without her. She’s just absent while you continue to live with her in
your mind and your heart.
But as the days continue,
she interrupts your thoughts less and less. And one day, you climb in bed and
realise that you didn’t think of her once during the daylight hours.
Eventually, she stops
visiting your thoughts in the night too. You don’t do anything specifically to
stop it. It just happens. Time takes care of things. You stop wondering what
you could have done differently.
This is the point at which
you’ve started to claim your heart back. You’re not quite ready to give it to
someone else though, not until you have every last piece of it.
But you get there
eventually. You do. You realise you have it all back, every last piece. And
maybe it’s a little bit broken or cracked in places. But that doesn’t matter.
As long as you have it all, that’s what counts.
Finally, you meet someone
else. They accept that your heart is cracked in places and you must accept that
of their heart too. But as long as you both have all of the pieces, you can
help one another put the bits back together.
And for the luckiest amongst
us, we realise that what we thought was the love of our life was not. It was a
love, yes. But it was never meant to last forever. It was a gift while it
lasted and you learned from it, but it was never supposed to last forever. We
realise this because we find something that puts everything else into
perspective. We find a soul mate.
I found a soul mate in
someone who had been just a friend for years. And we have built a beautiful
home and are blessed with an amazing little family.
And the world is wonderful
once again J
