A Chapter About Heartbreak
How do you write when your heart is broken? How do you NOT write when your heart is broken?
It’s been a long season of not writing, and I could make excuses but it all comes down to prioritizing other things. I chose to prioritize all of my spare time, energy, and mental capacity on making my 11 year throuple work. It may not have seemed like it on the surface, but the way things were headed consumed my every available iota of energy. In the end though it wasn’t enough, and it was likely doomed no matter what I did, so now we close the chapter on 11 years with an amazing, loving, wonderful woman who I will probably love until the day I die.
The writers’ urge to spell out every excruciating detail of the breakup, and unravel all the loose little threads that led up to it… to examine and hypothesize and explore the path that led us to this point, is strong, but ultimately pointless. The nature of the loss changes from day to day, minute to minute, and what I write now may be true in the moment, and completely false a year from now. We only know what we know once we know it for sure, and unraveling 11 years means I won’t know shit for sure for a very long time.
Over the last year I have wrestled with the idea that the life I was building… the goals I had set… were all built around the wants and needs of both of my partners as well as myself. At the same time, the cracks in our foundation were turning into canyons and it was clear that things were eroding faster than we could patch it back together. While I can’t (and won’t try) to explore any of that from either of my partner’s perspectives here, I am left with exploring what to do with the plans that no longer serve the future as it stands now.
For now that looks like a lot of purging. Removing design elements from our tiny home plans. Taking certain planned travel off my bucket list. Clearing food preferences, and favorite songs, and frequent haunts out of my list of considerations. I could go on and on but it all means the same thing. I’m carving out space for whatever comes next, and I’m in no rush to fill that space back in any time soon.
I’m also working to move forward with respect by temporarily removing access to any mutual friends and family that I only know through one partner. I never want to put people in the awkward position of feeling like they have to choose sides, and if given the option, I would flood my former paramour with as much love and support as I can from wherever they can get it, knowing that I have survived a polyamorous breakup before but this is their first. Knowing that I can’t be there as a friend to support them because I am obviously too close to it.
That’s the hardest part that I don’t really see anyone talking about: Watching multiple people you love get their hearts broken and the witnessing of that pain almost overshadows the fact that yours is broken too. The 4 different relationships that fell apart instead of just one (his and mine, hers and mine, his and hers, and our all-together-as-one dynamic). His breakup with her is very different from mine, and I’m both the first and last person to be helpful as he works through it. I know her inside and out, but she was different with me than she was with him, and vice versa. Either way, it’s a topic I’ll probably write about later in a more generalized way, when the wounds aren’t so fresh.
So now we come back to the beginning where I apologize, dear readers, for my absence and to myself for falling out of rhythm in my writing/publishing practice. This is why it’s probably best that I don’t have paid subscribers… because I know life happens and while routines are great in theory, they’ve never been easy for me in practice.
Heartbreak rearranges you. It forces you to carry what you never planned to, and to set down what you thought you’d hold forever. For now it’s enough to keep carving out space. Clearing shelves, rewriting plans, and letting silence settle where noise used to be. I don’t know what will fill that space yet, but I trust that when it does, I’ll recognize it. Today, the work is simply pressing ‘Publish.’
Drinking: Strong sweet coffee
Listening To: Cam – “Mayday” – A song that has resonated with me stronger and stronger over the last year. Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do in a triad is to take a step backwards and let go.
