Ally Maynard
  • Home
  • Contact
  • More

Last Christmas (ish) I Gave You My Heart

2/4/2014

7 Comments

 
Picture
Rarely do I remember what I was doing precisely a year ago. As someone who revels in the nonobservance of benign, bullshit holidays (i.e. Valentine’s Day, Talk Like a Pirate Day, anything with a mattress sale) and who spends the majority of the better holidays pumped full of enough weed smoke to forget the festivities all together, those trusty markers of remembrance aren’t something I rely on with confidence.

Last year was different, particularly February, when my heart was essentially ripped from my chest and figuratively hurled into a dying star.  Are the dramatic thematics enough for you yet?  Basically, I was hurt.  Badly.  Horribly enough that I still hurt pretty regularly, with my own little Marla from Fight Club; the little scratch on the roof of your mouth that would heal if only you could stop tonguing it, but you can’t.  I’m trying not to be a pussy about it but, alas, this pussy is a pussy when it comes to getting her heart broken.  Boy, do feelings suck sometimes.


Heartbreak is sickening.  It’s like the continuous inertia of getting hit by a bus, but at least once you get hit by an actual bus you’re probably, thankfully dead.  Heartbreak is the moment of bus to body impact stretched through days and weeks and months, until you’re so exhausted and in so much pain that those around you are scared you’ll break.  All the while you’re expected to function normally.

“Hey, Ally, do you want any coffee?”
“CAN’T YOU SEE I’M GETTING HIT BY A BUS”

The last time I felt like this was when I lost my dad to cancer when I was twelve-years-old.  I know that may sound insensitive and extreme, I mean, of course the long term psychological and emotional effects of a breakup can't compare to those of losing a parent, so that's good(?) I guess?  But losing someone you love, however you lose them, is a similar sensation to having someone die.

Picture
Getting dumped goes something like, “Oh wow!  This is awesome! I like having this person in my life!” and then suddenly that person is gone.  It’s jarring to say the least.  And the memory of them, the habituals of your relationship hitting dead ends, leaves you hopelessly in love with a ghost.

Pretty fucking sad, right?  Boo hoo me, right?  I hope you’re laughing, because heartbreak for me has been a long, long time coming.  Not one to value monogamy or any semblance of a long term, stable relationship I lived a hippie-dippy, polyamorous existence for the first half of my twenties.  I was upfront about my escapades of infidelity with very few of my male counterparts, and those who did know were about as cool with it as a snowman chillaxin’ on a radiator.  But I didn’t care, “No man is gonna hold me down!”  I bellowed from my feminist turret.  I was actually just being a shitty liar who wanted her cake and to eat it too.  Mmmmm.. cake… FOCUS. This was all fine and good (for me, not them) until I found someone I actually cared about.  Until my soul was like “I pick him” and conscious, butthole me ignored it.  Until it was too late.


You hear a lot about the five stages of grief and loss, yet they don’t tell you about the seventeen less famous ones; like binge eating and self loathing and driving yourself crazy.  Surprise!  Those are bonuses.  It’s one of the beautiful causalities of life, when the same person that made you feel whole is the same person that later, upon hearing a particular song, makes you want to hurl yourself out a window.

So much of the past year has been telling myself "I deserve this.  I totally deserve this."  Which, since I’m responsible for my predicament, I guess isn’t wholly untrue.  But what it comes down to is, you can’t make somebody love you who doesn’t.  You can’t make someone want to be with you who just doesn’t.  And so in a way I do deserve what happened.  I deserve to be with someone who wants both of those things.  To love me, despite all of my quirks and occasional instability, and wants to be with me while we figure out our weird lives together.

Picture
Basically I’ve accepted and embraced my pain.  I wear it like some sort of beat-up ‘badge of honor’, and know that if, after this kind of heartbreak, I can manage to function like some semblance of a normal human, I can get through anything.  Are you cliché induced barfing yet?

I’m pretty okay with it mentally these days.  It’s taken a lot of writing, some traveling, and a shit ton of love and support from my friends.  You really find out who’s in your corner when you’re down and out; a bloody, pathetic mess in the boxing ring of life.  And despite the pit in my stomach that occasionally peeps up like “Hi!  I’m still here!” I feel pretty okay physically too.  I’m healthier than I’ve ever been.  I’ve been treating myself with a care and sensitivity I’ve never before been able to manage.  I’m in a monogamous, healthy relationship based on kindness and mutual respect.  It’s weird.  Good weird.  And I’m making new memories, good, albeit hazy, weed filled ones, that will be what I look back upon next year.  If I can manage to remember.


7 Comments
Mike
2/4/2014 10:59:35 am

Just fyi, you hit on everything I felt and thought about when I was in the throes of a breakup a year ago (i.e. the sensation of loss being similar to death, how jarring breakups feel, and how we romanticize our exes and basically love the caricaturized ghost we build in our heads). The memories don't leave, they just harass you less frequently the more time elapses. I think everyone has to experience at least one awful, life altering heartbreak. Just a part of the human experience, you know?

Reply
Nic
2/4/2014 01:11:23 pm

I follow Brad Keselowski on Twitter and he retweeted something of yours one day and that's how I discoverd you. One of the first things I noticed on your twitter was that you were obviously beautiful. The second and most important thing I noticed was that you had an amazing sense of humor. "I can't do shit about fuck" is what hooked me. Most people wouldn't understand this but it was the most perfect thing I'd ever heard (or read) a woman say. I don't really know what I'm getting at, I guess I'm trying to say, you're a good one and some day you'll find a good one of your own, so cheer up and quit being such a vagina. There are wolf tees to discover and joints to smoke...two things that can go a long way towards healing a broken heart. I assume.

Reply
Luke link
2/9/2014 03:54:42 am

“Hey, Ally, do you want any coffee?”
“CAN’T YOU SEE I’M GETTING HIT BY A BUS”

Hilarious. And yeah, break-ups, even old ones, especially old ones, suck extra this time of the year.

Reply
Cee
2/10/2014 11:35:29 am

We are literally the same person…blog more please.

Reply
Devin
2/20/2014 05:51:40 am

Read this one when first posted. Read it again. Your posts continue to wow me.

Reply
J.. link
4/3/2014 10:17:14 pm

..im going to marry you..so you'll have to find some new non-relationship topics babes :)

Reply
Pavle Knežević link
5/1/2014 03:24:44 am

...true love...truly hurts...

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    November 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    February 2014
    November 2013
    August 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.