Breakups
After my last breakup my friend Allison texted me “Breakups are terrible. Different from other grief. Sucks to be on either side and everyone lives on. And it does get better.” I found this immensely comforting and also started fantasizing that my ex would die. It would be so much easier if he just didn’t exist. No trolling his social media or wondering how quickly he would start dating. And he probably hadn’t removed me as his life insurance beneficiary yet. Within a few seconds of such fantasizing I started berating myself for being a terrible person. I told myself to be grateful for the good times we had together and the lessons I had learned in the relationship. A year of grieving went by and every time I thought about him “not existing” I would beat myself up for having such cruel thoughts. I would find a Ho’oponopono song on YouTube and listen on repeat for hours. (Ho’oponopono is a traditional Hawaiian prayer that simply states “I love you, I’m sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you.”) I thought it was wrong to be angry at my ex. He didn’t mistreat me and he was kind during both breakups (which I initiated.)
I really thought I was grieving “correctly” and “consciously.” And yet a year later I was still thinking about this man way more than I wanted to. I had zero desire to be with him, and yet he would creep into my thoughts and I would start missing that magical first year that we had together before everything started to go downhill. Then a mutual friend told me that he was engaged. Less than a year after we broke up. The part of my brain that I was trying to tame with Ho’oponopono snapped. I was fucking angry. I was having visions of riding Drogon, Daenerys Targaryen’s fire breathing dragon to his house and burning it to the ground with both of them inside. I made an appointment with my therapist and told her that I was having disturbing thoughts and images. She is an Internal Family Systems therapist, so naturally she wanted to get to know the part of me that was angry. She was actually encouraging me to express the anger I had toward him. It felt good to talk shit about him for an hour, but after that hour I stayed angry. For a long time. I started working out longer and harder because I was consumed by anger and needed an outlet. I was imagining all of the cruel yet witty retorts I might say if I ever saw him again. I was scouring the internet for dirt on his fiancee that I could present him. If he wouldn’t cease to exist then I needed to ruin his life.
I can’t thank my therapist enough for not only giving me permission to be angry, but wanting to get to know that part of me that I was trying to exile. I eventually stopped feeling angry. Then I stopped thinking about him so much.
