My friend said this to me once after I again rehashed The Big Breakup to her years after the fact. Her mother had said it to her once before and it stuck with her just as it has stuck with me.
I think this is largely true, after watching other people’s experiences and experiencing a significant-feeling dissolution for myself. Relationships aren’t meant to be tested. They’re meant to be nurtured and supported and matured and enjoyed. But tested, no, not tested.
The Big Breakup, for me, happened because of such testing. Back then, we were both too young and too ill-prepared with too weak support systems (one, toxic even — and surprisingly not mine!) to overcome, and the cancer he was able to survive, proved fatal to our relationship. Sad, yes. In many and different ways, it was sad.
Now I find myself in a happier and healthier relationship — a more joyful, fulfilling, gratifying relationship — so (though who can really say with certainty), it is not far-fetched for me to consider that those past events happened for the better. They exposed the damaged spots ripe for festering and time and our individual dispositions and circumstances took care of the rest. And now looking back, it seems that, like mine, his path has veered toward the better.
But I hate to say that; I hate to think how my emotions weren’t enough to sustain that union and that my life has fared positively for it, even though I know deep down it is what I believe. I feel like I somehow betray my past self, that I am being dishonest about my past feelings, when I say that. But If I were to experience another dissolution, this time with my current partner, the newer one would reign over the original one in so many ways I’d much rather not to attempt to conceive.
But, at the time, the first one was so bad and so painful that it cut me in two — the good and hopeful half sent out to sea, abandoning the mangled, weakened half to try and live life on land for the next few years. And live I did, at first detrimentally, and later, less so.
It was close to five years until the good and hopeful half would return, teased in by the steady green light of an old friendship turned new relationship. But now it’s back, and I hope it never leaves.
It’s nice being whole again.