betrayal

Even though somehow life always works out, when you're in the middle of a heartache coupled with deep betrayal, it's a confusing state of limbo... you've got a vague sense of the innate truth contained a dozen bromides with which people will shower you -- it's for the best, you'll come out of it stronger, focus on yourself, take it a day at a time -- but even as the words are coming out of their mouths, all you'd really like to do is sob and scream and pull out your hair. Really, there's nothing like an unpredictable relationship meltdown caused by the insane behavior of someone else to make a girl feel completely out of her league when it comes to life.

***

"It isn't as though this is unfamiliar territory," you tell yourself. There have been dozens of men who have hurt you worse, and there will likely be a half-dozen more (who may or may not hurt, as those in the past have or have not) down the pike, but what matters now is that THIS one betrayed you, THIS one lied when he said x, y, and z, THIS one is the one who have to walk away from while feeling the pull more than ever.

Your therapist tells you this one was progress -- not as bad as the others, not as good as those to come -- while your friends are (perhaps) generous enough to remind you that soon (or soon enough) you'll be able to point to all of the warning signs you missed. But today -- while the pain is fresh and the full scope of the lies and the missteps and bad behavior come to fresh light -- you're interested in neither progress nor warning signs. Really, the only thing that helps is sobbing -- not the polite sort of crying you might undertake at sad movies or when your great-uncle dies, but the sort that entails snot and hyperventilating and screaming into nothingness. It's the sort of emotional outburst best performed in private, unless you really want other people to see the red-faced snotty mess you become in such moments. At some point, too, though, you are in enough pain that you wouldn't care if you were broadcast on national television during half-time at the Super Bowl. Because, yes, it hurts that much.

***

You know it will be okay, at some point. But "some point" is as much an abstraction today as are quantum physics and string theory and -- today -- you want something tangible, a set of instructions on how to get to the end of this process, how to get to the point where you don't want to pummel every man you see, how to grieve and heal and step gingerly out onto the dating floor to try it all over again, fully aware of the risks you're taking but completely willing to do so.

***

As the Coldplay song goes, "Nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be so hard." Pop music goes a long way in the midst of a breakup, and even though it's a cliche at which any rational woman would scoff under normal circumstances, these moments are anything but normal, and you've got to grab on to whatever you can use for a life raft. Pop music seems good enough as anything. And it's much more comprehensible than quantum physics.