Heartbroken

Last week I had my heart broken…not just good and battered, but really broken.

It was a night that read like an old-fashioned mind fuck. There were missed calls, stolen phones, manipulated messages, nasty words…and then somewhere beyond 4am, there was nothing. Just my racking sobs in the silence of morning.

Before this I was starting to think I loved him. 
I knew for sure when he was gone and I was broken. 

I felt betrayed. I felt desperate and lonely. I was filled with white hot rage that while his lunatic ex pretended to be him and tortured me until all hours of the night, sometimes calling me a cunt and alternately begging me to come rescue him, he was there. Doing nothing.

I expected him to call, but history has taught me they never call. And so I screamed my disappointment to an invisible audience. I shrieked at him for being a coward, for not caring about me enough, for failing to protect me when that’s all I expect of him.

But a tiny thought deep inside me struggled to be acknowledged: “What if he’s protecting me in the only way he knows how – by keeping his distance?”

An old movie quote comes to mind, “If you love someone, really love them, when is enough enough?” The answer is, of course, “Never”. I have every right to be upset and feel betrayed. But with those feelings I am only seeing the world through my eyes. I am not wearing his shoes. I am not the one who is afraid to sleep at night and simultaneously afraid to leave. I am not the one protecting three children from a crazy and dangerous woman. I am not in deep, fighting to keep my head up where I can breathe.

And so I push away the rage – it isn’t serving anyone here – and dig deep down inside for empathy and compassion and love. I let them take me over and fill me, heal me. And I let them spill out into the universe, where I hope they’ll reach him and those children and give them a tiny bit of comfort in what is right now a very troubled existence.

Maybe Not Just a Fling Guy and I will end up together, and maybe we won’t. But if you love someone, if you really do, then you never give up on them…even when your feelings are hurt and you fear your heart is broken.