California Dreaming

When you love someone, it’s incredible how many things trigger a memory. I walked into a restaurant last night, and Adele was singing a song that most people don’t really discuss, but it’s called Love Song. It’s so simple, yet haunting, but it made me reminisce the way songs do. Last time when J. and I broke up, I listened to so much sad music from A Fine Frenzy to Blu Cantrell to Whitney to Kirk Franklin. I couldn’t find any healing in any of the music, and music is my go-to. This time, I refused to listen to any music. I couldn’t stomach any genre, and resorted to quotes and writings from other broken hearted people. It was interesting to see how many people have been in a similar situation, and how in the end, we all felt the same. Blaming ourselves, questioning its validity at all, loving and hating simultaneously. I started to pin a million sayings on Pinterest into his own dedicated private folder, and followed so many poets on Instagram. But in the end, none of these helped either. It only confused me more because I started to remember the beginning through the almost end, when everything was perfect. He was perfect. For me a breakup consists of weird stages, but this one went like this:

• Complete heartbreak with full on screaming and crying, clutching my chest, called into work, couldn’t eat or drink
• Bargaining which consisted of hundreds of texts back and forth trying to understand and cope
• Seeking God in everything and begging for answers
• Numbness and realization that there was no hope
• Bargaining again
• His silence, then my silence
• First date since him, and then the closure email was written

Of course there are a few interchangeable stages in there or all at once. My poor pets were so scared, and never knew when I would just lose it and fling myself on my bed and throw an absolute fit. Dramatic, I know. I wasn’t getting the answers I needed from my family, friends, God, or him. I had just gotten to the point where I knew I could move past it all. I hadn't cried in a while, my heart still hurt, but it was moving on. And it was at the closure stage that I realized, this wasn’t really over in my mind. I didn’t want to let go, I wanted him to fight, to choose me. It wasn’t about emotions anymore or bargaining, it was that moment when Carrie sees Big in the closet of their penthouse, and she just runs to him. It was true love.

So my California dream would be to have him again, to be loved by him only the way he can. To know what was once right that went wrong, would somehow, someway become right again. Sometimes you have to weed out all the toxic people in your life, become private, and just breathe. No one can make your heart stop hurting except the person who hurt it. No one can tell you what you need to hear, no one’s experience can make your own experience better. However, I appreciate every person that gave me advice or shared their story because it gave me peace, and allowed me to see past my own pain to realize that in life we really are all quite similar. We all share pain, sadness, heartbreak, love, happiness, loneliness, confusion. We all have dreams that are broken, we have realities that are unforeseeable. We love, we hate, and we feel, we go numb, but at the end of the day, we are all alike, just humans searching for love, acceptance and peace. It’s pretty simple really, but life happens.

So today, I am dreaming of a life I was supposed to have that was stolen from me. I am dreaming of California, and all the possibilities that came with it. I can see the ocean, and smell the salt in the air, the breeze from the water. It's hopeful, and I feel peace in my dream, and I see his face smiling at me, loving me. I am dreaming of him and his love that made me so happy. It’s okay to be a dreamer, because life and reality will bring you back far too quickly. So dream while you can, hope for the unthinkable, do the unbelievable, and just find your happiness.

No Hope

“I think I’m getting better, I think I’m getting over it. I’m starting to not feel as hurt and missing him as bad.” Those words were no sooner out of my mouth that I felt the depression kick back in. It was like because I spoke it, the enemy immediately swooped in and said, “Oh yeah, check this out.” At dinner, I could barely eat as I moped and pushed my food around. On the way home, I checked Facebook only to see he removed our pictures. All of them. All of our memories, the happy smiles, the promise of a life together, gone. It kicked me over the edge, and I resulted in blowing up his phone with texts full of blame, begging, wishing, apologizing. Only to be met with coldness, and then silence.

There is this moment in a breakup that is singlehandedly the hardest part of the entire breakup once you are past the initial words of the ending, and that is the moment when you realize there is no hope. In a break-up, I feel that most people have some form of hope that lingers for an undetermined amount of time. It may never come, or it may come a year down the road or only linger for the first month. For me, it was two weeks. Two weeks of hoping that God would give us His blessing in our relationship. Hope that he would show up on my doorstep, and take me back to California and live happily ever after. Hope that the love and hopes and dreams we shared, and the life we planned in full detail would happen somehow, someway. Hope that my heart would be healed by his incredible love, and ultimately, hope that this was all just a really bad dream. But there is no hope, and that is the most incredibly sad comment I could possibly say about the relationship I shared with him.

Now comes the questions: Why is he so cold? Why is he walking away so easily? Is he with someone already? Is he talking to someone? Did he ever really love me? Was everything we shared just a dream that he never planned to fulfill? What, when, why, how? How could he walk away knowing all that he knows? The questions are endless, and I know the answers, but I don’t want to admit the truth, because the truth hurts. What no one knows is this… he rescued me from a dark place. He loved me back to life after I had given up on love, and decided to live a life of sin to fill the emptiness. He made me realize that I am loveable, and beautiful, and silly, and that I deserve someone good. I’m grateful to him for that, but with all the goodness came a lot of pain at the end. There have been days I wished to not wake up, and days that my heart hurt so bad that I felt like it could burst out of my chest. It has taken all my power to just get up and shower and go to work. I know I sound dramatic, and I’ll admit I am, but I have no apologies for how I am coping with this.

I will never plan my life with someone again without almost complete surety that it will work out. We made premature plans both times we dated. This time, we had how we would decorate our house, our Christmas tree, how we would dress our children, what kind of lessons they would have, their names and backup names. We dreamed of our ministries together, shared hopes and dreams of everything, made plans to go to San Francisco, different places in San Diego, Mexico, etc, etc, etc. We would just plan and plan, and hold hands in the car and talk about our wonderful life together. I mean, a month ago, you couldn’t have told me that I wasn’t moving to California in May. He was getting things ready there in Cali, and I was getting things ready here in Indiana. Hopefully a wedding in July and wanting to tell everyone about a baby in December. I was prepared to move my job, and had gotten permission to work from home, and was ready to sell everything in my apartment and move to start our life together. And then, it’s over… For a 34 year old and a 36 year old, we sure made some mistakes. I won’t do that again. I guess I just hoped this was it. I felt like it was, and I am starting to finally feel like it wasn’t. I don’t know how I’ll feel tomorrow, but today, there is no hope, and I hate that.

Death of a Relationship

How do you find happiness again after losing the one you love to a breakup?

I’ve often heard it said that a break-up is like a death, and for those who have experienced the death of a love then I apologize as I know it is not the same. However, the way we treat a true ending of a relationship, is often like the ending of a life together. The heartbreak, the memories, the walking around the store aimlessly and breaking down at the smallest memory, the triggers, the pain, the constant blips of hope only for those to be quickly dissipated. It doesn’t matter if you were with someone for a month, three months, five years or twenty-five years, each person that experiences a break-up with someone they planned a life with or had one with, ultimately experiences a death of themselves and that love.


For me, it was so quick and three months of whirlwind love and romance with every perfect word spoken, every dream dreamed, and every plan planned. I was astounded that I could find such happiness with the person, who was my true soul mate. We would both sit and wonder how blessed we were to be together after our less than blessed pasts, and muse that most people never get a chance to feel this type of love that we shared. People in public at restaurants, malls, wherever would look at us and laugh with us because it was completely obvious that we were undoubtedly in love and blissfully happy. So you ask, how do you go from being “undoubtedly in love and blissfully happy” to feeling “lost, hopeless, and alone?” The answer is unclear even to me. I know why he and I broke up, but the feelings, the happiness, the “rightness,” the God thing; the everything else makes my head spin.


I’ve hidden every present from him, the card, (minus my purse because I love it too much) and anything with his handwriting. It’s still painful to see the 300+ pictures of us on my phone, or the single pictures of him, he didn’t even know I took of him standing somewhere or walking towards me. He hated my need for pictures, but always obliged which I am still grateful for. I have one video of him, and I’ve only allowed myself to watch it once but his voice, oh that voice, it leveled me. If I knew the last time I kissed him would be the last time, I would’ve never let him leave; I would’ve never let him stop. Well not that I’d have a choice, but theoretically. I never thought I’d not hear his gorgeous voice say I love you anymore, but it’s gone, and it’s an awful feeling.

He honestly did what he thought he had to. He is broken, I am broken. Okay, I am way more emotional, so you know that I am way more dramatic and broken. I’ll have a good day where I am remembering how to be happy without him, and then I’ll breakdown from one trigger that I thought was hidden away or maybe just a simple memory, and the fact that our life we planned is gone. How do you rebuild a life again? How do you even think about loving someone again when the person you love is still out there, living, working, right there, but unobtainable? How do you readjust to your old life when you planned a new one and were living it?

What do you do when his half of his family is telling you to run and the other half is begging you to hold on? Your friends are telling you to cut it off and never look back? Your mother is saying let go and quit being stupid. But your heart is following him around like a little puppy, just wanting to be loved and wanting to be held. I have enough details, enough pain, enough answers and revelation to run as far as possible. But it was HIM. He was my one, but what if he’s not. What if I was mistaken? What if my one is really out there, and I made a huge mistake, but everything felt right? It’s hard to believe that you can really click with someone on every little aspect only to have it taken from you. How do you like all the same music, all the same things, have similar family issues, the same ministries, the same singing voices, eat the same little portions and share every meal, he does everything that I love like reprimanding me for being a brat, and then chasing me when I’m brattier, or trailing his fingers on my hands in the car because he knows I love to be touched, and making me say I love you and give him a kiss when I get irritable for no reason. He gets me, and I think that’s the hardest part of this. Putting aside everything I know about him, and everything he knows about me, we fell in love in a truly hopeless place. Was it the right time? No. Was it the perfect situation? No. He said over and over that 2018 was our year for happiness because it had been so long since we were happy. Here we are 31 days into 2018, and I am the furthest thing from happy. I’m experiencing the death of a relationship with who I thought was my soul mate, and trying to pick up my exhausted heart and trust God that He will love me back to life again.

PS. I haven't wrote on this blog in 8 years, and I scrolled down and saw a post about the same guy from 2009, called One Road, right before he broke my heart all those years ago too. It was good for me to see how similar this was again. Dry laugh.