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?
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