"Love isn't certain, it comes right out the blue, and when she casts her spell, there's nothing you can do"

The title of this post comes from one of my favourite music producer's, Sub Focus. The song "out the blue" featuring Alice Gold has such a happy feel, that when you're singing along to it, sometimes you don't even realise what you're singing. But is there really nothing we can do once 'love' takes hold of us?

Too many times I hear people say to others "Ahh, you'll get over it", "They aren't worth it", "You're better than that". I've been guilty of telling my broken friends these things, but when we are told them ourselves, they seem the most appalling pieces of advice in the world. We don't want to listen, because we are somehow convinced that it won't get better and someone else won't come along. Well, they might, but they will never be them. But somewhere down the line, we reach the destination, after the long bumpy road of heartbreak. We reach a stopping point, where enough is enough. It's time to throw away the broken record, and buy a new one, throw away the old ideas, and replace them with fresher ones. It almost becomes like some kind of epiphany, as if somehow, you've finally seen the light.

I'm writing this post because that is exactly what happened to me. After being tirelessly beaten down for being who I was born to be, I snapped, and effectively felt like this:

I was totally done with crying over someone who seemingly didn't care a single bit about me. But it came so much later down the line than I ever thought it would. I always saw myself as a strong person, and thought something as stupid as a break up would never get me down, but it did. I realise that I was not weak, my strength just temporarily got questioned. But I answered the uncertainty, when I was laid in a hospital bed, with drips coming out of my hand and arm. In my time of need, when I wanted the person I loved to just smile at me and tell me I would be OK, I was shut down in the worst way possible. That was it for me. All the tireless trips to hospitals and physio appointments, all the hugs and tears, relief and worry that I went through for him...I was in no way repaid. The response? "We aren't together now". It questioned my belief in humanity slightly if truth be told. If it comes down to certain conditions, in order to show a shred of care, then who can you turn to? Building my physical strength back up, helped my mental strength to prosper and I realised it was not a case of humanity, it was a singular case of stupidity and selfishness. And there it was. The final realisation that what I had been in love with doesn't exist anymore, and probably never did. So is it right to say that there's nothing you can do?

Granted it took an extreme situation for me to realise this, and I wonder whether I would still be in an addictive thought spiral of thinking it would eventually work out if I hadn't have been admitted into hospital. But there seems to be a plan for everyone, and in most cases I have seen, including myself, the person who was left the most broken, does actually end up coming up better. I have learnt an awful lot about myself, and I have battled the hardest fight of my life, and I do feel now like I have won.

My advice? Wait it out. Don't be ashamed that it might take longer than what society expects. It was never society's heart...it was yours. Busy your mind, get yourself out of bed, dry your eyes and think:

Is it just a long goodbye?

These wise words “Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation" were written by Kahlil Gibran. I often wondered whether I had a broken heart before. I sat around as a naive sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, even nineteen and twenty year old thinking I had faced every thing that 'love' had to throw at me. A long term relationship:fizzled, an unrequited flop in my first year at university, and a summer romance with someone I thought I loved, that just happened to live on the other side of the world. I thought, with no looking back, "That is it, I am done. No more relationships for a long, long time"...then it happened. The most powerful thing to envelop my life. Admittedly when it began, I was totally unsure. There was this very tall, handsome guy telling me how lovely and gorgeous I was. Known for being a total heartbreaker, I trod very carefully getting to know this new, quite domineering character. I clumsily fell over my words around him, tried to be 'totally cool, yeah' but he saw right through me. It was go from day one. There went my strong statement of 'never again'. Everyone around me, knowing how easily I can fall, rolled their eyes, chuckled and said "well maybe this one". I was still a little unsure, but when he nearly passed away in a serious motorbike accident, things altered. I still didn't know how I felt about him, and I questioned my motives on the long 2 hour drive to the hospital. "Why am I doing this?" "I've only known him 3 weeks" "how do I even begin to help him?",  and as I walked into his private room off the ward it hit me like a ton of bricks. Seeing the once so domineering, confident guy who kept trying to get me to open up to him laid there, restricted and restrained by tubes and plaster. He smiled such a slight smile, and even though it looked like it pained him so much, he sat up and said "hey you". As I write this, a tear rolls down my cheek thinking about what once was and the huge amount of love and care I felt for this person laid in front of me. It was like being hit by lightening. But was it just the start of a long goodbye? 

Recovery was painful. Physically and emotionally. I bared a huge amount of responsibility, not because I had to, but because with all my heart I wanted to. It was very easy for us to fall in love given the circumstances. We spent a lot of time together, and for a while, we hit total contentment. But with passion, comes a huge amount of emotion and it wasn't long before the arguments began. Chasing each other, telling each other we hate but love each other, yearning to fix what broke, but being too stubborn to find the glue. Breaking up, making up, hanging on and letting go. 

The final straw came in June. And I was left, my heart totally smashed to pieces. No way to find some glue this time. To this day, I will never know what caused such a huge bomb to go off in my world. So broken, so torn up, totally lost without my other half that I got so used to. When I look back over that time, I just see a thick fog. Worries, fears, crazy episodes, stupid decisions all intertwining to make this substance that stops me seeing this part of my story in focus. But you still sit there, despite the long good bye and think, "no surely not" and we make it even longer for ourselves. Not all of us, admittedly, but for the few of us that do...why?? 

It brings me back to Gibron's quote "ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation". It seemed that only at this point, I realised just how much I thought I needed him in my life. He got under my skin, and was a living, breathing part of me that seems to reproduce and become bigger and bigger as each day went by. 

Why do we do it to ourselves? It seems as a human race, we can love and not really realise the depths of our feelings until it gets ripped away from us, in the most violent of manners. No matter what went on that was bad during the time you were together your brain seems to mentally block these images out, and we only see sunshine, their hand in ours, comfy double beds with 2 heads fighting for the same pillow. We see stupid faces that never fail to bring a smile, we hear "I love you" being whispered in our ears when no one is there, we feel hot tears fall down our face, as we recall the moment when the person your heart yearns for says "I will never leave you". We should, by rights, scream out and fight it all and rid ourselves of these positive images, that are now just poison running through our veins, slowly making us fall deeper into a hole. The things that once made us feel so good, are now making us feel so bad. 

Was it always a long goodbye? Were we always just a player in the game life sets up where you win or lose? Or was it genuinely what they call LOVE?