I think it's a fact of human nature that we try and exact revenge on people who hurt us, by trying to prove how better off we are without them.
It's an instant reaction, once initial shock has subsided into anger but not yet fermented into grief, where we purposefully attempt to one-up the other, living as exuberantly and loudly as possible to show them exactly what it is that they've lost, honey. It's a destructive, spite-driven state which makes us do rash and out-of-character things, and from personal experience, nothing we're proud of.
But underneath it all, I think we do it because we can't actually remember who we were, before. Who we are, alone.
Try as we may to deny it, our personalities and identities are shaped and defined by the people we surround ourselves with. And when that falls apart, not only does it sting like an absolute bitch, but it also destroys the context in which you've learned to operate as a human, and now you're... kinda left in no man's land.
But however much it sucks... I'm starting to see the silver lining. Maybe we don't always have to be lost.
From the moment my Mother met A, she was transformed. She metamorphosised and blossomed under his influence, and he truly unearthed the best in her. So what was she to have left, when he did? Without him, her life now seemed foreign. Had she only become the person that he wanted her to be?
HELL no.
Without him, she sailed around the Mediterranean with her best friend, travelled to Iceland alone and trekked across Malaysia. She started going to military fitness three times a week, ran two marathons and completed an iron man contest. She bravely quit the job she hated without even another lined up.
She'd changed because of him, but she hadn't changed for him. She'd discovered exactly who she was and who she wanted to be in one - it had just taken someone else to see it in her, first.
Losing this friendship, however temporary (I hope) it may be, has given a lot of time to think. Without them in my life every moment of every day, I have felt such a great loss... but a surprising amount of clarity. Because with this person, our passions, projects and plans were all interlinked, and suddenly removing them from the orbit totally fucked up the gravitational pull, and required a complete re-contextualisation of my identity to make sense of it all again. I guess I never before considered that perhaps I could be doing these things alone. So I've has to ask myself some serious questions. I've had to ask myself... do I want to?
And slowly I've come to realise that one of the greatest joys about being in the presence of this person, was that with them, I lit up. Without a doubt, I became the best possible version of myself, more distilled in her desires and more purposeful about her plans than ever. This me wasn't fictional, I'd always known she was in there, yet I could never quite seem to line up the pieces to get her out. With this person, the alignment was instant and effortless. They were the catalyst that first allowed me to be. And I can only hope - yet deep down, I know - I did the same for them too.
However, sometimes things get mixed up and fucked and that's just a little part of being human, huh. And I'm not going to emotionally kidnap them. I really don't mind letting myself get a bit lost, if it affords them a little more space to become found.
But now alone and de-contextualised and finally all right with it... I've noticed that I haven't stopped being the way that I am.
I am made of music, art and literature and that was not software installed in me by anybody else. I am a creator, and adventurer and a human, excited. And that I shall remain forevermore, with or without the key that first allowed me to open that door.
Curiously I feel even more driven to create now, because now I can clearly see the anchor it has rooted in my soul, not attached to any other, more temporary, infrastructure. Of course, I'd rather forget this whole mess and return to the way things were... but it's nice, for once, to look inside and not see an enemy.
I don't know what happens next, but maybe this dark cloud isn't all bad. Maybe there's no greater way to find out who you truly are, than to lose the person you thought was why.
