Feeling Release
Letting go of a former flame, with love
In 2019, after four tumultuous years of marriage, my ex-husband and I separated. Our union turned out to be less “fated,” more fatal. I was conditioned to believe the fission was entirely my fault, and pushed myself to the limit day and night to cope.
While pouring gasoline on the fire that is PTSD doesn’t play out so well for our health, it works great as far as capitalism is concerned. I rose in the ranks at work and started to be invited into “the room where it happens.” (It was a food company, so I quite literally learned how the sausage gets made.)
I was also typically nursing an intense hangover from trying to keep up with my wonderfully wild, ride-or-die group of friends. It was like a daily support group, with copious amounts of booze and escapism. We even had our own highly exclusive Slack channel. I remember when my cousin met them at my 30th birthday party, she said something along the lines of, “you’re obsessed with each other. It’s not healthy.” Though lacking tact, in retrospect she wasn’t completely wrong.
Fraying at the seams from a marriage I had thought would complete me, I would do anything to feel part of something again. Come nightfall, I’d swap out my shiny overachiever mask for concert clothes and smudged eyeliner, like an emo werewolf ready to take on the city that never sleeps. I’d howl my broken heart out until two, three, four (!) in the morning and get rocked to sleep by the subway ride back to Brooklyn. There were impromptu visits to Coney Island—the end of the line—more often than I’d like to admit. The train felt safer than home, I realize as I write this.
The night my ex-husband officially relocated to his friend’s couch, I wailed along with Phoebe Bridgers to ‘My City’ at Brooklyn Steel (“Risk it all on a game of chance / Chasin’ love like an aaambulaaance!”). I had a lingering cough, a 101 fever, and a gum graft scheduled for the next day. The tragic irony is clear to me now, as I try to love myself into relief (and dare I say, recovery) from my Long COVID rollercoaster.
Back then, life was a tilt-a-whirl of work and play. Emotions ran higher than me and my friends on edibles at the Korean spa on a Sunday. I poured my most unruly feelings into poetry, and the rest spilled over into daily life, making everything feel technicolor and raw. I want to apologize to anyone I body checked on the streets of NY (who in the actual world was I?)—life was tough and I tried to be tougher.
Recently, after a particularly fitful night of “sleep,” my best guy friend from that era visited me in a dream. The guy friend who gave me piggyback rides between bars. The guy friend I drunkenly hugged like it would keep me from falling apart, for real. The guy friend my work wife threatened to “beat with a stick” if he didn’t make his intentions clear. It was bittersweet to see him again. Heartbreak has a way of resurfacing until we figure out how to feel it, and release the person it’s tied to.
He was my most lighthearted pal. He’d regularly yell “PROUD OF YOU!” to friends and strangers alike. For dumb stuff too. It always got a smile. I was a hypervigilant introvert and crushed on his way of disarming people, myself included. He worked in sales but wasn’t your typical alpha type. We shared a love of emo and post-hardcore bands and would duet Taking Back Sunday at karaoke. The rim of his baseball cap smelled like summer in Manhattan (iykyk). I huffed it once (ah, love) and swear I would have gotten sick in the middle of the crosswalk, if I didn’t have emetophobia.
Drinking with him was like undressing. Each ounce stripped away the niceties and brought us closer to an underlying truth. I opened up to him about what had really happened in my marriage. He texted me Radiohead’s “House of Cards” one night to, I don’t know, torture me? Seriously, don’t hit play unless you’re prepared to feel something. Then we’d be sober again, back to friends, which I appreciated just as much as anything else. And yet, it confusing as hell (I assume for both of us).
After a romcom level of back and forth, we finally found ourselves sharing a cab and the make-out sesh an audience waits for. We skipped his stop. I pushed him up against the faux green marble of my building’s elevator.
As his hands lifted my dress, I remembered I was at the tail-end of my period. I remembered my apartment was full of trash bags and regret. I remembered my shame. I sent him—and us—back to where we had come from.
He wound up with our mutual friend not too long after. She held her whiskey better anyway. I tried to hold on to our friendship leading into the pandemic, but a bridge had been burned. The two of them drifted away to a world where only they existed. I stopped expecting songs and initiating text conversations. Neither of us has made the effort to reach out since. I think it was the first time I internalized that people we care about can just…vanish. Take a different path. Never to be heard from again.
Five years and a dream later, I took the time to grieve our friendship and the brief, unrequited (?) love (??) affair that transpired. I gently uncovered the wound I had neglected while tending to so many others. While it stung, I realized our connection had been life affirming, a spark in my dark night of the soul.
There’s a quote that comes to mind: "You're not healing to be able to handle trauma. You're used to trauma. You're healing to be able to handle joy." Maybe the detour with my friend was a sign that I was heading in the right direction, realizing I deserved more.
Emotions running high, I turned to poetry:
the things i cannot say
i’m happy and hopeful lately
though i did dream of you, and i
can’t catch my breath
the whole day after
my chest heavy with how i try
to hold you in my mind
i’m sorry i hid my feelings
but you left riddles like a liar
i didn’t think that you could love me
but dirt needs a forest fire
i know it would make you sad
it makes me sad.
remember when we were reckless?
soaking with well whiskey
throwback emo karaoke
anthems and anticipation
the night you kissed me
thank you for holding my pieces
though they didn’t fit like hers
everything’s changed now, for the better
and rarely for the worse
i know it would make you glad
it makes me glad.
Thank you for bearing witness as I unearth previously hidden parts of my psyche (meep!) while learning how to live my best life with Long COVID and ME/CFS.
Proud of you!
Lisa
Making space for grief, the ultimate in healing 💜