When Jonathan and I first broke up, I wanted to be sad. Actually, that's not true. It wasn't just when Jonathan and I first broke up that I wanted to be sad; I wanted to be sad for a long time after we broke up, too. To me, going on with my life and not being sad anymore would be normalizing the loss of the person I'd been closer to than anyone, the person I'd loved more than anyone I'd ever known; it would be conceding that that version of my life was over; it would be moving on. I've written in the past about how heart wrenching I find the end of relationships, romantic or otherwise; how weird and unsettling - how unfathomable, how disturbing - I find it that people who once shared everything, people who at a point in time both literally and figuratively touched every single centimeter of one another, could revert to strangers, and I wanted no part of it at all. When Jonathan and I ended, I wanted to be sad until the end of time. I just couldn't bear the thought of a Jonathan-free life, but if I had to live one, I vowed to never be happy again.
Well, that changed. Actually, wait. Lest you misunderstand, let me clarify what I mean by that. The part about me not being able to bear the thought of a Jonathan-free life, that part didn't change - it still hasn't - and the part about me being happy again, that part didn't change either, but the part about me wanting to be sad, that's the that that changed. One day not so long ago I was standing in the shower thinking about Jonathan since the shower was pretty much his favorite place, and it's impossible for me not to think about Jonathan when I'm showering, and as I've been wont to do, I began to cry, but instead of sobbing like I'm also wont to do, I made myself stop. One second I was staring down at the bottom of the tub having just uttered fusion while pressing an old bar of Dove onto a new one, lips quivering and eyes tearing up, and the next minute, I was like No, Kelly, no; this has got to stop, and I pulled up my big-girl pants (except I didn't really because who the fuck wears pants in the shower?), and I did. It's time, I told myself, and I went about trying to happy up my life.
This revelation, this decision to purposefully move away from sadness, was a few weeks into summer. Before that, I had done a few here-and-there things that should have made me happy, that should have been analgesics, as my former therapist put it, snippets of good things that would make me feel temporarily better and then, eventually, after having done enough of them, the temporary would go away rendering me cured from the all-consuming sadness that had become my life.
My half-marathon, I suppose, was one of those things although I didn't do it in an attempt to make myself happy so much as I did it because, like one of the many random guys I've gone out with in the last year said after asking me why I was doing it and I mentioned my break up, I needed a win.
(And did I? Get a win? Did the analgesic do its thing? Well, I ran the half-marathon and beat my goal time which was all well and good, but when I finished the race, there was nobody waiting for me at the finish line; I stood all alone watching people participating in the post-run celebration while I waited for my sister to come pick me up and bring me back to her apartment where I'd left my car; I drove home thinking about how alone I was; and then I spent the rest of the day by myself in my house with nobody to even acknowledge what I'd done, so no. The analgesic did not do it's thing; if anything, successfully running the half-marathon made me feel worse. There's nothing like having nobody to share a major accomplishment with you to make you realize you're utterly alone.)
Not long after the half-marathon I went after, and achieved, another longtime goal of mine, something I'd been half-heartedly trying to do for years but honestly thought I'd never be able to do. You know what, just for fun, let's take a look
and while, yes, doing that chin up did genuinely make me happy - happy enough that I immediately text Jonathan to tell him about it because old habits die hard - the happiness was pretty short lived. Like the half-marathon, it - it being consistent, grueling exercise and meticulous macros counting - also wasn't done as a direct attempt to make myself happy but because, one, I really had nothing to do with myself after Jonathan and I broke up, and, two, if stupid, fat Carla was going to be living my new life, fuck if I wasn't at least going to look a million times better than her while she was doing it.
Anyway.
While those things, the half-marathon and the chin up, were byproducts of my break up, once I got a few weeks deep into summer and had that moment of clarity in the bathtub, I decided I had to chase happy any way I could, that I couldn't spend my whole life waiting to live, so live live live I did. And how did I live live live? Well, first I flew to Iowa and did this
and then the next day I drove to Nebraska where I did not only this
but also this
and the next morning I woke up super early, dropped my friend off at the airport, and drove to South Dakota to do this
and the day after that, I flew to Texas so I could do this
and when I got home from that super fast whirlwind trip, I saw another one of my super good friends and we did a lot of this
but I was miserable still, so right after he left, I flew to Connecticut to
drove to a little town on the border of New Hampshire and Vermont and
made my way up to Maine where I
and then meandered down US-1 all the way to Boston so I could
And you know what? I was still sad. Just as sad, if not sadder, than before I left. Going to all those places mostly alone, places Jonathan and I were supposed to go together over Christmas break a year-and-a-half earlier but ended up changing our plans last minute because I didn't want to run in the cold, just emphasized the chasm between my former and my current life.
Another chasm emphasizer? I somehow found myself in an accidentally burgeoning relationship with a persistent guy I couldn't shake, a guy who, after our fifth date, sent me a text that said he'd been with chaste women before but it'd been a long time, so when he kissed me, he didn't know what to do with his hands, and well, I'm pretty sure you know that when chaste and me are mentioned in the same sentence, something is amiss (I'm also pretty sure you know what that is). He and I aren't seeing each other anymore - I had to text him a Dear John when he told me he missed me one morning after having picked me up from the airport maybe thirty hours earlier - but the brief time we spent with each other bordered on brutal if I'm entirely honest. Every time he kissed me with so much force I had to fight to keep my head upright and my neck from opening up like a Pez dispenser (and I don't mean that in a good way like ooh, he kissed me passionately and commandingly, I mean it in a bad way like eww, he kissed me awkwardly and clumsily), the chasm got wider and wider until it was so large, I'm surprised I didn't plummet into its depths, lost forever in the space between what once was and what I don't want to ever be although now that I think about it, maybe I did. Maybe I fell so far, so deep, the side I fell from so far behind me, it's like it was never even there, the equidistant side in front of me so far away, I can't even tell if it truly exists.
***
About a week after my second trip, I was listening to The Wonder Years for the first time in a while when I heard it, the lyric I used as my beginning-of-the-year weekly quote several years in a row: It's not about forcing happiness, it's about not letting sadness win, and it hit me. I'd been going about things all wrong. In my decision to not be sad, I was trying to force something that couldn't be, and in trying to force something that couldn't be, I'd made myself feel even worse.
As it turns out, there's no flying away from, no outrunning my own life. Fuck an analgesic. It doesn't matter how many goals I achieve, how many friends I see, how many drinks I drink. Happiness can't be forced, but maybe, just maybe, I can do what Soupy sings and not let sadness win.
