This Is a Shoutout to My Ex
You didn’t break my heart, you broke me open.
While I hope some of you read the title of this post to the beat of the song by Little Mix, this post takes a bit of a different direction than the song.
For quite some time, I struggled with moving on from my last relationship, because I was so grateful for the lessons I thought I had learned from when I still existed within its sphere. In a recent revelation, though, I realized that I didn’t learn those lessons then, I had just been shown what it was that I needed to learn.
Cue, the shoutout to my ex, who mirrored to me the parts of myself that I needed to love—the aspects of myself I sought his approval for were the pieces of my being that I desperately craved permission to love—and then left my life so that I would be forced to learn exactly how to do just that. He didn’t break my heart, he broke me open. He shined a light on the cracks that I once preferred to hide, and then left so I could learn how to let my own light shine through them instead. And, for that, I am so, so grateful.
I can say with absolute confidence that our breakup was the best thing that could’ve happened for me. Was it the easiest? Not at all. It probably ranks somewhere in the Top 5 category of “Hardest Things I’ve Ever Dealt With.” [More on all of that in a previous post, “When Loving Someone Means Letting Them Go”] Sometimes the breakthrough feels awfully like a breakdown. I think I had my fair share of both. Even after I thought I let go, I was holding on to every last memory and feeling for dear life. I still catch myself holding on in small ways, if I am honest. It can feel easier to hold on to the past than to take the initiative to build a new future.
Aries season has just come to a close, and for any of you who follow astrology, I am have my sun, moon, and mercury placements in Aries. My ego/physical self, emotional self, and communicator self all are fiery rams. Fire, as my friend Madi from the Cosmic Revolution reminded me in her podcast this week, brings about death and rebirth. A forest fire, for instance, results in more fertile soil for a new forest to be born out of. In moving forward after a break up, I think we can all benefit from looking to the archetype of the Phoenix. The phoenix lives its life, and when it is ready to start anew, it bursts into flames and is born again out of its own ashes. For a while, I was not letting one phase of my life end so that I could be born out of that ending’s ashes.
Letting go, Brianna Wiest states, is simply accepting what has already gone.
I am appreciative to have loved someone who left the next person big shoes to fill. (Big dancing shoes… that boy loves to dance) What I am also thankful for, however, is that he left those shoes behind; I have learned to have immense gratitude for a relationship that did not last. If it had, I wouldn’t have been so invested in learning how to love myself. God knows why we wait to learn how to love ourselves when it feels like our survival depends on it, when it feels like if we don’t choose radical self love, our world might just cave in. But I’ve noticed, in myself and in others, we often wait until we are so sick and tired of feeling incomplete before we finally fill our own damn cup.
I used to think there was a not-so-secret formula to life, to success, to fulfillment.
In high school, it looked like this: 4.0 + being “pretty” — letting anyone see my flaws + being involved and passionate — being too opinionated + being “thin and attractive” — being “too athletic” — being conceited + having self-esteem and self-confidence + being a good person — being “too nice” + going to the best college possible + having lots of friends + having a boyfriend = quintessential (dated), smashingly successful high school experience. So, I tried to stick to the formula. I watered myself down and burnt myself out and checked the boxes and dotted my i’s and crossed my t’s, but guess what? It wasn’t enough. I tried so f-cking hard to do all the things that would make others like me that I neglected the practice of loving myself. So, when I finally “got the guy,” and was ready to slow-dance at the Prom my way to a happy ending, I still had so much to learn. Turns out, there would be a global pandemic, Prom would get cancelled, and nearly all the standards that made me “successful” by high school standards became irrelevant overnight. By then, though, I had spent years externalizing my self-worth, believing it came from accomplishments, objects, or other people. For so long, I had invested my energy in anything outside of myself that I thought would make others love me more. What I needed to do, instead, was harness that love from within and then let it radiate, from the inside to the outside.
The love that lasts always comes from within. Relationships are invaluable teachers; They mirror to us how to better love ourselves.
I needed to be heartbroken to be re-opened to how to love myself when no one was watching. For a long time, the same issues and insecurities plagued me, and it wasn’t until I was challenged to do so by my last relationship that I finally confronted them. A part of me was so angry when our relationship ended; I felt like I was being deserted to figure out everything on my own, and it terrified me. I wondered who would ever know me well enough for me to have those types of conversations with someone again… UNTIL… I figured out that the person I really wanted to talk to was me. Love that doesn’t last reminds us of the love that does; relationships that serve as a reality check that the relationship we have with ourselves is forever.
For me self-love after the breakup started small. It began with believing that I was worthy before, during, and after he and I were together. It involved asking myself, “what do I want to do today?” It was a whole lot of being alone, but not lonely. Most of all, I learned that there are periods of time when life sucks a little, even when everything on paper is good. It isn’t a race to get back to the “good,” it is an opportunity to learn from the pain and embrace the suckiness (guess I am making up words now, eh) until you emerge from the cocoon of your grief as a beautiful, fragile, transformed butterfly. I had to learn to appreciate life’s highs and lows, because without one, the other doesn’t exist; without peaks and valleys, life would be one plateau. BORING!
The secret to a life well-lived isn’t composed of an equation finding the difference of several do’s and dont’s; a fulfilled life boils down to being a vessel of light and love for yourself and those around you. We are like kaleidoscopes; light shines over and through both the dark and shiny parts of ourselves to let colorful, vibrant images take shape.
We can’t shine our light if we aren’t open to letting the light in and reflecting it back out. Just like a kaleidoscope, we use light and mirrors to reflect objects and create beautiful, mesmerizing patterns. It’s those parts of us that are cracked open that let the light bounce around on through. It’s loving ourselves into believing we are worthy of it (our own love) that lets us live life colorfully, and to make art out of what is. Not to confuse metaphors, but consider how universally appreciated the mosaics are for their beauty; they are technically broken and fragmented pieces, but they’re whole masterpieces, at the same time. Their broken parts don’t mean they’re incomplete— they are there by design. We are no different. Someone else’s love doesn’t make us whole; we are born whole, as we were created to be. It is our job to remember that truth, and to never let ourselves forget it.