You First

A broken heart hurts. I still remember the weekend when my heart shattered. I had been, I presumed, romantically pursuing a colleague from my workplace at the time. She was leaving the company so I figured it would be even better to pursue the romance. I write pursue, for it was not an equal dance of two partners, it was a chase. Every step I took towards her, I could sense that she took two back, looking back. At the time of course I was head over heels and ignored any signs, all the signs.

That weekend the signs were clear as day, though I was not sober. It was a farewell party from her job. I had been boastful and for some reason thought drinks would give me more courage, but they only made me more foolish. In her sobriety she was cool and calculated towards me, but apparently interested in the pursuit. Yet as the night wore on, I could sense her distaste towards me, her disgust even. I ended up alone on the dance floor, and as I ventured to get another drink another patron of the party ended the life of their cigarette on my hand.

It was raining and I took the night tram home. I ended up waiting for maybe half an hour at the last tram stop, thinking I had to continue, but I was already at my destination. I sobbed myself to sleep. The pictures of the night before flashed through my brain, her cowering away from me. Her avoidance. Her flirting with others. I was just a foolish suitor, racing after something that could never be caught, because that is what a romance and relationship are not: a chase. It should be a dance, a duet, an entanglement of two who are genuinely interested in getting moving the same direction. The realization thereof broke my heart, because I realized I had invested time into something that would never be. I realized also, how foolish I appeared and my drunken stupor made it only worse.

That same weekend I soothed myself with a bath and turned to an app a friend suggested, Headspace. I had meditated before but thought it was not something for me. Then using that app, which I will shamelessly plug for it truly helped me, I laid in the bath and ended up crying yet again, realizing how out of touch with myself I was.

Up to that party night I had my own inner voices whisper to me how things were. I painted pictures in my mind of what she thought, what others thought, how others spoke of me, and my anxiety drove the point home to the highest heights. After meditating since then almost daily, I have come to realize my behaviour at the time was not good. It was self-destructive. It was folly, and I had pursued her far too long. In order to love others, I should love myself first.

I never would have expected that I would find such peace and tranquility after meditating. I am way more at peace with myself, I find more job in the day to day, and I live in the moment much more, worrying less about the past, and much less about the future.