To be honest, there’s something that stuck with me from the first evening of my breakup when Daniel was holding me while I broke down crying.
Daniel: It went from a high level of care to nothing… so it hurts. This says more about Stéphane though, you went through a divorce with Stéphane without breaking down this much. Also you gradually grew out of your marriage because of the dick he was.. you kinda gave up. But of course, J is a different ball game…
You see, aside from who moves out, who gets the dog, and who keeps the record player and that one-piece designer wooden-dinner-table, most divorces/breakups are painful. You lose friends, family, and a piece of you forever. The loss is truly that piece of you that you willingly gave away. At this point, you must take care of your mental health and heart wrenching pain, while keeping a straight face and carrying on with your daily chores. Office, Uni, family, friends, colleagues… sometimes you just don’t have the energy or the right mind to express yourself verbally.
But that is ok. Life goes on. Despite all pain.
When I talk of breakups or divorces – I am not indicating amicable separations where the relationship has run its course (like Stéphane and I, Laura and J). A relationship exhausted. No. That was my divorce. That’s why it didn’t hurt as much. I tried. I tried an entire decade, while supporting Stéphane to reach his goals and aspirations. Including times when I wrote his reports, cause his English was that bad! My issue? Blindly believing in love, blindly romanticising what my parents have. What I grew up around – a healthy habitus of a functioning marriage, – subconsciously, I adhere to that ideal.
I have no regret. Stéphane was in love with his current partner since a year before we separated, and I was subconsciously aware of it even if I never voiced my observations. I was aware and I let him find his piece of heaven as I moved on with studies, my dog, and life in general. I tried marriage, at a very young age, and it truly didn’t work. It itched, but I didn’t have the need to scratch, cause it was just the itch of a healing wound – it was a wholesome liberty from an abusive marriage. My breakup with J was different. It needed/needs healing. A bandage ripped off a fresh wound that still needs healing.
What I am trying to point out perhaps through this blog is this. The healing process. The healing that must be done as one starts to deal with a breakup that has left us heartbroken, lost, and struggling to adapt to a new normal. And I am aware that out of about 8 billion, I am not the only one facing this. No one is that unique.
My new normal is the realisation that love is just a chemical reaction and not the romantic notion I grew up watching on Disney movies and reading in fairy tales. It is a hopeless loop, and this journaling on my blog is helping me out of it.
Some might think this blog is about self victimisation. Unfortunately (for you and fortunately for me) you are wrong. This process is known as writing therapy or therapeutic journaling/blogging, where the process of writing down thoughts and feelings for therapeutic reasons aids in a form of individual therapy that allows the author to identify emotions, understand source, and eventually deal with them. So to ask someone to not share it, especially when that person is not verbally expressive enough, is – if not cruel – down right selfish.
Thus…. When J wrote to me in the most diplomatic way possible to put my blog down cause it: “publicly present others within that constellation that may have or may not have influenced the situation”… it was truly the last blow. I stepped back and put him down from the pedestal that I had placed him on.
When I started to write this Breakup Driary, I knew nothing about the science behind this blog/journal therapy. I just forced myself to say it like it is, with brutal honesty. But of course my ex found it in his right to have the audacity to ask me to not share my feelings cause it falls (by his judgement of protecting his narcissistic self and toxic chauvinist bestfriend) “within that constellation that may have or may not have influenced the situation”.
But to gradually let J out of my life (as he wished dispute stalking me and then deleting the fake IG account yesterday), journaling/blogging everyday made me feel less alone. Less cornered. It wasn’t about “an Alfa move” as Rilke put it – it was and still is about healing and helping others in my situation to recognise this pattern and heal themselves. But of course it hurts some people deeply as they cannot tolerate either seeing a woman healing or a brown-woman having the strength to tell the truth and be critical yet honest about it! Despite all indications – (oh my) audacity! How dare I?!? How “radical” of me to not remain cornered, hurt, scared, and dead inside! How dare I survive?! How dare I fight back? That too by telling the truth and being honest: How dare I.
As Ayn Rand paraphrased Kant: “If the truth shall kill them, let them die”.
Yesterday when I met Chreggles and I didn’t have to go into discussing in details cause she already read what I wrote – I realised that seeing my pain and darkness in writing on a screen only told me what my main concerns were… for example being able to identify J’s narcissistic side and Hannes’ hyper-masculine toxicity (as well as axioms that allowed him to remain opinionated about me in the most shamefully ignorant German mindset ever, including not having the fairness to research/understand Swiss Studentenverein and their members that includes coloured, non Swiss, LGBTQ members – by just homogenising it all, simply based on preconceptions and “opinions” by calling us/me – a brown woman, and many other people of colour who are also in Studentenverein, a bunch of racists) – just made me understand that this whole karma is not on me, it is on them.
Their opinions. Their ego. Their selfishness. Their incapability to self-educate. Their ignorance. Their manipulation. Their narcissism. Their closed-mindedness. Their lack of proper education, including etiquette. Their lies.
Sounds brutal, but… No matter how much J excuses his social connection – it’s on them. Not on me.
HK mentioned last weekend – “you need someone who has studied in a proper university, not someone indecisive with 4 non-University bachelors degree, cause the wavelength varies.” I had to reread my blog, revisit messages, see my pain and darkness, to know how true that is. I find myself constantly learning from my experiences by having the courage to revisit them. To critically question them. So now it’s my turn to critically question what I did wrong.
After discussing with Chreggles, I find myself accountable for ignoring early red flags and trusting some stranger so easily. My fault was I agreed to him proposing me to be his GF the very day we first met after four months of long-distance courtship. My fault, agreeing-to meet his family the very next day I landed back home in Switzerland. My fault was that I put my walls down so easily, to be so trusting and thus immature. My fault.
And about the rest of me… I am brutally aware of my shortcomings and I consciously and systematically work towards bettering myself.
This journal/blog not just showed me how some people can try to muzzle me due to their own insecurities that they project on me – but also this therapy allows me to feel the pain by being in control of it, at the same time. And while dealing with my pain, I have a lesson well learnt. Not to be repeated ever again: Do not trust. Do not trust so easily. The moment you see a man so eager – run. Cause no man is truly eager to settle. Particularly not in their 40’s if their longest relationship was of 3 years with someone toxic.
The illusion of a happy ending is not a rule but just an exception. I have me to live with, and only my own decisions to abide by. J was/is the last straw drawn. And though every great journal begins with “dear”, my blog begins with realism that I should remember:
Prologue: “Don’t get your hopes high, but do keep your hope open.”
ANTHROPOLOGY OF LOVE 