Stop that. Stop telling yourself that having a partner in your life is the only thing that matters. After being in a couple of long term relationships, all I can say is it’s fucking overrated. Sure, it’s nice. It’s sweet until they’re lying and cheating again. It’s lovely when there are flowers and gifts and attention, until they stop caring and you’re begging for affection once more.
Let them run. Let them. The ones who run aren’t mature enough to handle someone so authentic. Someone who is as lively and eager and passionate as a river coursing through lands, that wild spirit of yours so free and wondrous. Wide-eyed, staring at crystalline stars of an immaculately clear night. You deserve someone who will be as steady, as strong, as reliable as the waters that nourish the world’s thirst.
I know you’re tired. Tired of feeling crazy, of them telling everyone how you treated them yet conveniently leaving out how degraded and belittled you were when they finally slammed that door. Someone like that isn’t your river. They aren’t the ardour pulsing in your blood, where every drop of their existence merges with your own. They aren’t the heart-stopping breath before the waterfall’s edge. The maniac ride that this life can be requires a teammate who can be there to bring you back up from that edge; not walk away when you hit rock bottom and crash into pieces on the rocks, leaving you there.
Because you know what’s better than begging some fucking indecisive person for love everyday? Waking up and loving yourself. Going to work, showing up for yourself and building your life for you. Paying your own bills. Having your own fun. Going shopping solo. Wearing whatever the fuck you want without getting criticized for it. Being friends with who you want without your partner making dumb remarks about who is in your inner circle. Making your home and your space yours because the shit they never cleaned up is no longer around and it is a blank canvas for your soul to come back to you. Cranking whatever music you want as loud as you can without getting made fun of for your favourite Britney Spears songs, or whoever it is you adore. No commitment to someone who doesn’t care in return. No arguments. No drama. No nagging them to do what a grown adult should be doing. You don’t have to grocery shop for them, cook, clean or do their laundry. You ride the currents of your own solo life. The highs and lows. And sometimes sit on the shore to take a breather and soak it all in. It’s actually fucking liberating once you get used to it.
What I’m saying is: once you learn to take care of yourself, love yourself, accept that you are single and might be for a while, to cater to yourself, you find there is less want or need for a partner. Someone who can confidently take care of themselves is a force. A stronger current amidst everyone else simply scrambling through societal expectations for relationships we aren’t ready for or don’t even want. We don’t have to be tender, naive lovers who fall to someone else’s feet in desperation. No. Be a raging wave over the rocks that think they can stop you. Nourish the world around you with love and acceptance, and do the same for you. Take that ride until you can’t feel that person who broke you in your blood anymore. Drive all night, through your darkness, until dawn touches the horizon and you can see the light ahead. The way a watercolour sunrise dapples upon the currents; smearing lilac and tangerine and golden hues across the river and you know that the world isn’t all gray anymore. Drive until you can see the shades enter your sight again.
While processing that pain, learn how to make yourself happy. Take up a cheap hobby. Start or get back to writing. Scribble it out even if no one else will ever read it. It doesn’t matter the format. Rearrange your house. Make crafts and decorate with them. Surround your favourite corner with your favourite books and a fuzzy blanket. Go for walks and merely soak in the world. It’s spring. Get outside even for a short time each day and observe how the earth is being reborn right now - because through these fractures and hurt and tears, so are you. These endings are also beginnings.
We are rivers. It doesn’t matter if one thing ends. Life keeps going and continues to carry us even if we stop in one place. Don’t let it pass you by until you wake up one day only to wonder which oblivion these years disappeared into. Process. Feel. Unpack everything, remove what isn’t necessary for the road ahead, repack. Take only what is relevant to you.
You will survive. You survived before them. You will survive after them. We are our own rivers, our own open roads. It’s okay to break down on the side. To fall apart. But don’t unpack and live there.
