I had forgotten how much of a physical feeling heartbreak is. The first time my heart was broken was just before Christmas, possibly even Christmas Eve, I had a secret boyfriend and I had to go up to the payphone the otherside of the village to call him and talk to him without my parents (Dad mostly I suspect) overhearing and using whatever I said against me. Or hell, just knowing I had a boyfriend.
I remember writing at seventeen, in some poem or other that breaking your heart felt like being kicked in the chest. I’ve been thinking about that a lot this past month. The sheer physical pain of it, I’m honestly not sure that it has felt this bad since then.
I wrote a poem about Weasel once, that I was playing in the shallows with him. It’s absolutely unfair, but, the romance was gentle, the love was slight, mild.
I don’t know if I’ve been in love like this since I was seventeen, as completely, as deeply. Is that unfair to the Jellicle? The Jellicle is my Home, but we always said that we were supposed to go and have adventures and then come back to each other and tell all about them. I have not been having adventures for a long time, I felt like I’d found some people to have adventures with, and they liked the way I loved them, no ifs, no buts, no telling me I was too much or too weird or they just weren’t that into me. I don’t remember it being like that since Blue Eyes.
Even FJ, for all we had romance and deep love that we could count on for a long time, he was patient with me and rolled his eyes.
And M-i-L, my girlfriend for eleven? twelve years? Am I being unfair to her? We have a Companionship, we talk forvever of our traumas and our adventures and the love we share is warming, candlelike.
All loves are different, all heartbreaks are I suspect, but every time I’ve wondered about myself if I am capable of loving deeply, and passionately and with my whole heart? I have an answer, I can, I do, all it takes is to be loved like that in return and I am capable of it.
For years I thought of love as being diminishing, I advoided it, sex for fun and casual friendships was my idea of living and I had the best time. I would not trade in my lovers for the world. But I’m converted, I’m all in, to experience that passion and that healing, balm of being loved? This is where it feels as if I’m being unfair, but for all that the Jellicle has always made it a rule that I have to have a good emotional relationship before I can sleep with anyone that eighteen year old with far too many one night stands has always been just below the surface. I changed my mind, maybe too late, isn’t it always too late? I want love please, I want to be loved I want to share like that again please.
All loves are different but I guess I liked the deliberate nature of these. I liked how intertwined it was and intentional. I’ve basically been in bed when I’ve not been at work, my heart has hurt too much for me to get much of anything done. Christmas hasn’t really been put up in my house for all we did carolling the other week, my advent earrings haven’t even had one outing, let alone sixteen. Could I love like that if there was only one person? I don’t know. If it felt like that though I’d be willing to try.
I know that along with heartbreak I’m still processing trauma so at the very least the answer is not anytime soon. My brain isn’t working right, even more than usual I mean. Maybe that was it, maybe I get to love and be loved like that once in my life, maybe that’s all I can take, my heart has hurt and my fatigue has, as a result, been through the ceiling? floor? I’ve been asleep or laying down a lot.
It’s taken me a long time to cry, it usually does. I think I am slow with emotions, but they get very deeply inside, being loved as I have been loved this year is the privelege of my life, and that little inner goth girl wonders if this is just the price for that privelege. Because everything has a price doesn’t it? And being kicked, very squarely in the chest is one I’m going to need to work up to paying ever again.