Learn From Your Break-Up

My marriage ending has taught me what I need, what I want, and what I don’t want.

One day I sat feeling terribly devastated about everything that had happened and decided it was time to pour those volatile, sticky thoughts into words.

I was a little shocked when — instead of the explosive ranting that I anticipated — what came out was something I would have been thrilled to say as a bride on her wedding day.

As a writer I felt that peculiar kind of joy over being able to give a voice to what I previously thought was intensely abstract emotion. As a newly single woman however, I felt overwhelmed, flooded with sadness, and more alone than ever.

What irony, I thought, that as my marriage dissolved, I could finally and seemingly effortlessly write my own vows. And that’s exactly what I’d done.

I blindly saved the words to an obscure folder on my desktop and ignored it.

From time to time I'd be drawn to the file and open it. Read it. See if it still made my heart cramp up.

I’d wonder why I’d written it. I wondered for whom.

It was only recently that I started reading it every day.

And it was only recently that I realized I had written it for myself.

Enjoy.

I don’t want to grow old with you.

I want to stay young with you forever.

I don’t want to get my head out of the clouds.

I want to fly to the greatest heights together.

I don’t want us to be anything more than who we are.

I want us to breathe peacefully in our own silence; smile in the wake of our actions.