Thank You For Breaking My Heart

It only took me 49 years to appreciate this busted open feeling!

This heartbreak opened me up to be even closer with my own children.

Hey,

It’s Christmas Eve morning. Last year, I had my children snuggled up with me and I had just come home from a beautiful week away with my then-boyfriend: A man I loved (and still love) more than any other. My beloved Bear. 🐻

But this morning, I woke up alone: My children, with their father. My ex-boyfriend…who knows where. I had that feeling. You know that feeling, right? The heart in the throat feeling. I spoke to a few dear friends from bed and tbh, I feel loved. I know I am loved. I’m not taking the lump in my throat and projecting it into a universal no-one-loves-me narrative. In fact, I’m not even sad my children aren’t with me because I know they are with their father who loves them and deserves their love every bit as much as I do.

But, their absence creates space for me to really feel my heart. And whoa, Nelly! 💔

I associate the feeling with Him…The Bear. I don’t give much thought as to where he is now. Or with whom. I’m just with my own bodily sensations. This heart. This heart that feels like it’s walking on a high wire. That fine line between “Help me!” and “This is exhilarating!” It’s kind of crazy how the natural response to this feeling is to assume the former, and try to shut it down.

Speaking of shut down. This sweet heart of mine was closed for business for over two decades. I mean, of course, it opened for my children. But even there, I was limited in how far it would stretch because it started from the clamped-shut position. It doesn’t really matter why it was closed. What matters is that I had married a lovely person who I treated like a partner. I was far more focused on what needed to get done and how. “I’m not your assistant,” was a common refrain from him. I would get annoyed about goofy things like being woken up in the middle of the night from his having to use the bathroom. Or if he was late to Math Night at the school. I was always pushing him to be more holistic and spiritually focused on his own healing journey. Like, I was a big shamer when it came to his choice of taking Zantac for his heart burn as opposed to changing his food choices. (I was so fucking smug when Zantac was taken off the shelves. “See? I told you so.” 💅) But you’re getting the energy right? Clipped, efficient, always needing to be right. Straight from the head…not at all from the heart.

Enter stage left…The Bear. In our relationship, he could have gotten up to pee 10 times a night and I wouldn’t have cared. He could have snorted Zantac for fun and I would have been curious not judgmental. I can’t tell you exactly why I felt this way. He wasn’t necessarily better looking or kinder or more anything than my ex-husband. In fact, when we met on Hinge, I had been in no rush to meet him in person. I think it was maybe a month and a half until I kind of begrudgingly agreed to go for a walk. But the first time I looked into his eyes, there was this sense of 😳 “There you are.”

We had this odd timeless, spiritual connection. It was deep and beautiful. But like everyone, we also both had backpacks full of stuff from our childhood and our respective marriages. He was less focused on the journey than me, so every three months, it seemed to get too much for him and we would split up. We saw the relationship like a Netflix series. Each season had it’s own story arch, memorable moments, soundtrack, and hard ending. Followed by a hiatus.

I’d pack the hiatus with dating. You know me. Cue Lady Gaga: “Boys, boys, boys…We love ‘em!” I love meeting new people, having new experiences. It’s an easy filler for me. And it’s been an easy filler during this hiatus, too. But something shifted this morning, as I sat with the heart-on-a-highwire act…kind of exploding out of my body. I decided instead of quelling this feeling with another guy or another flirtation, my own version of Zantac, let me greet it with curiosity, for once. I have run from this sensation my whole life.

And here’s what I found out about that feeling…

It’s merely my heart bursting wide open. It’s vulnerability! I’m experiencing the feeling of a wide open heart without the safety of another’s protection. Usually when we feel this type of big heart opening, we’re in a relationship. We feel the feels, and that person is there to ground us by reciprocating that love. By making the plan to get together. By responding in kind to our loving gestures. But those of us in unrequited love, don’t have that. So we want to shut the feeling out because it feels terrifying: Like my most precious bits are just flapping in the breeze, unprotected. The Bear isn’t in my life to ground my open and quaking heart. So I keep looking to other men (or sugar!) to ground it. And while those men may be more than willing to be my next Bear. They aren’t my next Bear. I’m just using them to ground myself in Bear’s absence. I just binged The Sex Lives Of College Girls (best ever, btw) and one of the character’s dropped this line: “The best way to get over somebody is to whore out with someone hotter.” Check. Did that. Newsflash: It doesn’t work. But there is good news in all this.

My heart is terrifiedly open!

This heart-on-a-high-wire feeling needs a major rebrand: Instead of scary, let’s call it thrilling! It’s true that having The Bear close by to catch it would feel safer. (And yes, during the two seasons of our love affair - I did feel safer and more grounded 😌). But perhaps that feeling of safety was only an illusion. Because we all know relationships end. I, for one, know that all too well. In fact, who says this is a hiatus? This particular series may be cancelled. I’m not waiting around for someone to spot my heart.

So my practice will be to have the courage to allow this death-defying heart-in-my-throat sensation to vibrate as long as I can each time it comes up. I will not silence it by dating guys I like less than The Bear. I will not stuff sugar in it’s face. (Okay, maybe I will until January 3…🤭). I will not think of it as a symptom of a love gone wrong…but rather a love gone right. It may not have lasted. But it was such a good thing. This Bear walked in and broke me wide open. I was clenched, so closed and tight. I thought I would live the rest of my life that way. We all know people like that. And maybe I will never find another Great Love of My Life, I have no crystal ball. (My friends are rolling their eyes because I consider The Bear my Great Love…whatevs. I’ve learned so much from loving that guy.) But whether or not my heart is open is up to me. And I’m not even sure the main purpose of keeping it open is to find another romantic partner. I mean…don’t get me wrong - I hope so! I love being in love. But the open heart is for my children. It’s for my beloved friends. For fuck’s sake, it’s for me! My own sense of awe and connection. It’s so I can see the beauty and grief in the world and really be of it. My open heart is what connects me to everything and everyone around me.

So once again, I thank this beautiful Bear for ambling into my life. During our last hiatus, I learned how to love myself through the abject pain I felt when he left. This time, because of that new found self-love, I’ve been able to nurse my broken open heart well enough to see that I won’t bleed to death. This isn’t a deadly injury but rather the gift of life. The gift of going through life with an open heart and experiencing the rest of the world without a thick armor. I can feel! I can feel! I can feel!

And ugh! That naughty Bear. It’s so much easier to hate people that leave you. To draw the line, turn your back and move on. But I continue to sit with gratitude over this love that came and conquered me. This one person who I couldn’t commandeer and control…to teach me surrender…to learn how to be humble and allow both love and grief to come in and flow freely…to release anger - not just about relationships that don’t go the way I want them to, but about a world I can’t control…to soften. Ooof. To soften.

I love you, dear reader.

Thank you for being there as I brought myself back to life this year. I sit here now with tears in my eyes and a heart that feels like it’s on the edge of the world’s tallest building. I know this feeling is called being alive. And this is what I wanted. I’m back in the land of the living. Looking forward to our IRL gatherings in the New Year once we get our bearings with our new friend and neighbor, Omicron. And hey, Happy 2022! Here for you, 24/7, as always at atoosa@atoosa.com.

xo, atoosa

The soundtrack of my heart 🤍🖤❤️: