I’ve written quite a lot about my ex. The conversation we had on a dating app, the day we first met. The highs of our relationship. But I feel like it’s been building to this post. Because I think this blog feels a bit like therapy sometimes. I write about certain experiences almost as a way of processing it. And I had to write about the good, it felt like the majority of our relationship was good.

Until it ended.

The ending came out of nowhere. There I was daydreaming about dancing together at our wedding, I was dancing in the kitchen thinking about him, about us together. Seeing him walk towards me while we went for lunchtime walks put a massive smile on my face, I’d walk like I was skipping next to him, so happy was I in what we had.

And then just like that it was over. I had no control over it, there was nothing I could do to stop it, to change his mind. It was just gone.

It’s hard for me to remember the dark days after that.

There was a lot of crying. There was a lot of laying in bed near comatose. I couldn’t listen to music because every song about love or heartbreak or even music with a certain tone set me off. I found it hard to eat, I couldn’t follow conversations very well because it felt like the rest of the world existed on the other side of thick glass and I couldn’t see or hear other people that well. I was off kilter just that little bit.

I’d try to tell myself I needed to do certain things, walk the dog or cook dinner. But sometimes even doing the simplest tasks would mean I’d just start crying. It was okay when I was on my own, the tears would fall silently and if that progressed to light sobbing or even full on wailing nobody would be there to hear me.

But I couldn’t control when the sobbing started. The first time it happened in front of someone else was the day after he ended things. I was in the kitchen trying to warm up something for my lunch. And I felt like all of a sudden I just didn’t have the energy to stand anymore and I just slumped over onto the kitchen floor and there leaning against my kitchen cabinets, my hair a mess, still in my pyjamas with salty tears streaming down my face I told my ex husband.

He knew I’d been seeing someone, knew that I felt it was serious but we’d never had much of a conversation about it. Until that day. I remember he looked up from his desk with real confusion on his face. It had come out of nowhere for him too. He wasn’t expecting to wake up that day and deal with this, deal with me. And he was kind about it. Kinder than he ought to have been perhaps. I told him that things had ended and that I was sad, I might be crying more often than normal, that it would be harder for me to do things.

And he let me talk. And cry. He gave me a hug (which was the first time we’d touched each other in forever) and something in being held in that moment unleashed some of the biggest, ugliest sobs I’ve ever done in my life. And that’s how it went for awhile. Me crawling through my days, through the fragments of my life that I could still manage. All I wanted was the comfort of my bed, the comfort of my dog’s cuddles.

I think I wanted oblivion in those first days and weeks. It felt easier, simpler to just not exist whenever I could. To choose emptiness rather than to fill myself with the pain and agony. But I didn’t always have a choice. Some days it felt like my chest had cracked itself open and I didn’t know how to hold myself together. Some days it didn’t feel real. Some days I woke up and I’d forgotten that we’d broken up and I had to relive the memory all over again. Have my heart broken again in those moments as I remembered what had happened.

Some days I’d be angry. At him mostly. At myself. At the world for being unfair. Some days it made me feel better to hate him. It made me feel better to think he was a terrible person, that he’s a coward, that he played with my heart and with my emotions so casually. I’d think back on things he’d said or things he’d written in messages but I’d look at them only from a perspective of him being the bad guy, of doing the wrong things, of being hypocritical or disingenuous or insincere. And some days having that jagged edge around my feelings towards him made me feel better. But it sometimes made me feel worse too.

I’d think …what if things changed, what if we could go back. What if I changed, what can I do to make things different, to make them better. What can I do if it meant that he’d come back. The what ifs nearly killed me because any kind of hope when combined with him also kills me. For my own sanity, this was one of the first boundaries I put on my heart. Stop it with the hope already. It no longer exists.

My ex husband would check in with me on occasion. He didn’t do it often because I think he could see on my face how unwilling I was to talk about things. I also felt ashamed. I hated that the person I’d most hurt in the world was forced to watch me go through such a painful thing, the heartbreak of losing someone else. That he had to watch me come back from the total destruction of my heart.

He asked me once in one of those check-ins ‘Would you even want him back?’ and from the tone of his voice I knew that he meant would you even want him back after he didn’t choose you, after he did this to you? And I remember I’d say ‘yes’ when he asked back then. But I look back on it now and I realise that my answer would have to be ‘no’

I’d loved so big. And then I was crushed by it.

And I think I’m forever changed by it. I’m no longer the person that can love that big. That can trust someone so completely with my heart. I’m no longer the person that would allow someone back after they took a bulldozer to my heart, whatever their reasons or justifications for it were.

I want love again and I want intimacy and closeness and an approximation of things I had with my ex. And maybe some day I’ll want something as big. Some day I’ll feel capable of those big emotions.

But that’s not today.