What happens when the heartache ends

And other musings on the end of wallowing

I’m sat at a desk editing copy for a client’s social post, when the voice inside my AirPods alerts me to a message from my ex. It begins to read it aloud.

“Hi Lindsey Hall,” the programmed text states. “I just sent you $451.10 via Remitly and the money wi-…”

“Stop,” I call out, ceasing the AirPod voice mid-sentence.

I know what the money is. I know where it’s headed. And I know in four business days it’ll move from pending to within my account.

It’s the last chunk of change I’ll receive from him.

And likely the last time I’ll hear a British Airpod voice announce his Latino name incorrectly.

Pushing my Bluelight glasses up the bridge of my nose, I peer down at the automatic text sent via his number: the final gut punch in what has been a prolonged battle this year of who did what to whom, debts forgiven or fought for, and likely many times both of us separately wondering “how did we get this hateful?”

I’d imagine, at this final marker, we quietly acknowledge that neither of us won the war of dignity and grace. We both lost something.

But on we go anyhow. Knowing somewhere amidst all of this, that the most we will ever learn from an experience such as this, we learn a long time after the something is gone.

The fog of heartbreak is lifting.

It feels strange in the same way it provides relief.

I’ve been so dazed, partially stunned since my life fantastically imploded in March on a balcony in Medellin that this recent evolution of mood and mental state is hard to trust.

Is it truly possible that I’m ready to inch (hesitantly, perhaps tiptoe) forward to whatever comes after this tornado-spanning, hurricane-hitting mess of heartache? Am I finally peaking my head above the self-imposed hole I’ve thrashed wildly?

I feel skeptical of these newfound, balanced emotions. I’m not entirely convinced they’ll last, but I can recognize that something is shifting—and that this shift is ongoing.

Take last week in Mexico, for example. Each morning, I woke up without immediately thinking about my former, perfectly curated apartment in Montreal—a space I once loved so much I was certain I’d never stop grieving after the breakup. In fact, the thought didn’t even cross my mind for most of the day. And when I finally noticed, I almost forced myself to think about it, as if doing so might make things feel… normal? Familiar?

Like, oh yeah girl - make sure you get your grief and longing in today lol. Can’t go on with your afternoon without your sorrow and regret fastened to you like a backpack of rocks!

Being in Mexico was interesting. While my ex is not Mexican, he is Latino and his family language is Spanish, one of the qualities I was endeared to. I wondered if the trip to Puerto Escondido would inflame my wallowing sensibilities every time I spoke my broken Spanish or passed a man who looked a tad like him, or if I’d surprise myself and feel something different (oh God please, I begged, before I took off on the tarmac, please feel anything new).

Turns out, both happened. One night, a Colombian in our Airbnb complex who was uncharacteristically tall like my ex and had that same *waves hand* thing my ex has - the natural brooding, come hither attitude - was dancing around the community outdoor kitchen when I noticed the resemblance.

While I felt the familiar suffer as he sang a song my ex often played in the car, I also noted that within a few minutes following the soft wallow, I had moved on to another thought, a newer thought, a more present one focused on what the plan for the rest of the night would be. I know that sounds odd - to notice that my own thoughts had thought themselves out - but when you’ve wallowed for as long as I have, simply cycling to new thoughts is a relief hard to put into words.

That I am capable of even shifting thoughts now. Such a small-seeming thing to be grateful for but notable all the same.

Mostly, I think I’m aware that it’s time: an acceptance concreting that my life will never look like or be last year again.

It’s over, it was always over really - even while we were together - and there is nothing more to do about the whole ordeal but accept it and fossilize the experience into the future growth and meaning it’ll deserve.

Puerto Escondido Beach-ing!

Recently, he hurled accusations that I’m sending abusive messages to his girlfriend via fabricated Instagram handles. Even more audaciously, he suggested that if it wasn’t me, then it must be one of my Substack readers—implying that among you 500 subscribers, someone is so bored, so spectacularly unoccupied, and so captivated by my relatively ordinary heartbreak that they’d not only uncover his identity but also track down his girlfriend to bombard her with a series of wildly unhinged, mixed-English DMs deriving from my viral SubStack post here. For context, here’s a glimpse of a couple of those messages below.

Lmaoooo - what

After having a friend who works in online security run background on the handles and messages, their team concluded that those handles never existed. Never have existed. And the messages were rudimentarily made likely on a fake DM message app and sent to me under false accusation. If you look at them all together closely enough, it’s clear it’s not IG DMs (missing PMs and AMs, icons, not putting whether follower follows you or you follow them, etc.)

Whether his gf is drafting her own harassment to cast me in a sour light, or it’s him doing it to taunt and throw shade as some form of revenge — I’m not sure and at 35 years old refuse to put even more investigation into the whole ordeal.

But, as more and more new, suspect accounts watch my Instagram stories on my accounts I mentioned to my brother: it’s a blessing in disguise.

With each increasingly anger-filled text my ex sent last week, I found myself resorting to an overall sentiment:

Okay.

My family and friends hate you now, he typed.

Okay.

I don’t reach her heels, she has qualities I’ll never have. If he never sees me again, it’d be too soon.

Okay.

Okay, I say. What else can I do? It’s not what I’d have chosen but it is what it is.

Okay.

Prior to this DM social media incident, it’s not that I expected us to reconcile as close friends, but of course I hoped for a type of closure in this battle.

I still hold out for that and whether that’s delusional or not I don’t really care. I believe it’ll happen, much as it typically does with parted couples once the anger, hurt, attachment and social media stalking wear off.

Maybe it won’t - maybe he’s incapable of that or maybe we both are given the rather abusive nature of our history.

But at present, due to these particularly harmful circumstances, and where he sits in his beliefs, I’m accepting that it won’t be soon.

Which means there’s little room for any choice other than to pack up the car, put the gear into drive, and hope neither of us die tragically while at this stalled intersection of resentment.

A friend (somewhat inexplicably but I’m sure with good intention) sent me a pic recently of my ex with his girlfriend.

Expecting the familiar sharpness in my gut when I first glanced at the photo, instead I found that I felt like the person I was looking at was no longer someone I know anymore.

I recognized the shirt I bought him. I recognized the earrings we share, the pants we shopped for in a Montreal Zara. The familiarness in his crooked smile from when a dog bit him as a kid.

But when I saw the two of them, I couldn’t help but notice how proportionate they seem in comparison to any of the photos the two of us shared in our time.

Visually, they match, nearly related in appearance. And I knew immediately where they were too, which in the same way it feels odd it also feels weirdly right for his life.

They should be at that Montreal restaurant. It’s his favorite - and I hated it. I hated those syrupy-slathered BBQ ribs. I hated nearly every restaurant he preferred, and every habit we didn’t co-create. I detested his penchant for sugar and fast food, and our polarizing beliefs on working out and finances, video games and trap music.

I thanked my friend, and shared that I no longer needed to be privy to pictures like this.

Because ultimately it really is no longer for me to see.

We shared so little in common - culturally, age, music, sport, financially, values, politics. Where I veered left, he veered right —

And don’t we both deserve to be with someone who delights in at least a few of our particular preferences?

Isn’t that the point of all this love stuff? To pass time with someone you don’t have to keep finding ways to tolerate their humanness.

On that note, I suppose I should mention I’m also dating again, though I’ll clarify.

I’m dating one particular person, again.

Or in earnest, for the first real time, though there were years of brief encounters leading to now.

Our romantic history long and winding, with many texts and DMs exchanged and brief run-ins from Colombia to Amsterdam to Florence and Paris, this person has continued to show up over the years as a sounding board, a rock, for me to crash into in all my recent blithering lack of grace.

Isn’t it funny how experiences evolve and meld us? What attracts me to this person now is exactly what I did not want two years ago. At the time I thought his emotional fortitude was cold, or unfeeling. Why would I want to be loved with no passion, no soul? I thought. Logical, pragmatic, and not keen to panic — perhaps, my therapist reminds me, I’m not familiar with love that is not a hurricane.

This man loves me; it’s a weird thing to write and not worry whether I’m inflating or going to regret having written it.

When we started speaking again after my ex and I split, I didn’t think this person would have any desire to love me - or at least not in the same romantic sense. Maybe more in a platonic “I have love for you, but I’m not going down that path with you again” way. Not only has this man had a first class ticket to my chaos, but also because I openly, unabashedly said I could not promise anything for quite some time.

For reasons I’ll never understand, it didn’t rattle him. Not even when I was in Montreal for three weeks bawling my eyes out on the regular, fighting with my ex, cleaning out an apartment, oscillating between grief and anger, and completely - just utterly - self-absorbed.

“I know you’re not ready for a relationship,” he said to me in June as I pulled away from Montreal. “Clearly,” he added in sarcastic frustration.

“But if you give this a chance one day, when you get out of the mental shit storm you’re in, I know why you’re good for me. And I know I’d be good to you. I can’t explain it, even after all this. But I know we’d be good together.”

“I can’t promise anything,” I said, likely shrieked from my packed van in near hysteria. “Don’t you get it? I’m a disaster right now. You deserve way more than what I can give you. I’m a fucking mess.”

“I know,” he agreed. “And you allow your emotional whims far too much power,” he paused. “But, that’s beside the point.”

I guffawed.

“I know once you’re on the other end of this, you won’t be a monster. Because I’ve seen you, girl. I saw you before this. I know who you are.”

I remained unconvinced.

“Let me love you,” he said. “Go home, get your eggs frozen, do what you need to do this summer and fall. I’m not going to wait for you forever, but I do love you and I hope you give this a chance. When you’re ready, meet me in Chicago.”

“Besides,” he added. “You’ll love Christmas in Chicago.”

“Okay,” I said, hesitantly.

“Okay,” he said, firmly.

So far, he hasn’t been wrong.

Earlier this week, wandering off a 9:00 PM flight back to Chicago, my AirPods blasting my latest ‘Chi Town Xmas 2024 Playlist” and my overweight backpack slipping off my shoulders —

I exited my flight amidst the airport holiday tinsel and people scurrying about gates, and headed toward a bathroom to rearrange my half opened, disarranged carry on bag and to fix what felt like a knife poking into my back coming from the backpack.

I don’t know why I chose the bathroom to be honest, I could’ve just sat in a nearby gate chair but logic simply tends to escape me.

Locking myself into a bathroom stall, I sat fully dressed on top of a toilet, re-arranging my backpack. As I got to the bottom, I noted the culprit: a circular slim portable charger lodged crookedly, poking the backpack’s interior outward.

As I maneuvered it, I noticed smushed paper cemented into the bottom of the pack. Fingering it lightly, unsure if it was my Mexico tourist receipt or something I’d need in customs, I smoothed it enough to read the creased, typed one sentence note:

”Gracias por haber llegado mi vida”

I can’t help but smile.

I don’t remember why my ex sent me this note or for what occasion or even when - and maybe it’s the laughable irony of finding it again in a Chicago airport en-route to see another man, or the tiredness of the whole long circus charade — but with my elbows on my knees I stare at the creased words, and as I smile like a deranged loon, tears also began to roll down my face.

And for the first time in months, it doesn’t ache to cry. It just feels like relief.

A reminder that when I think of everything we did to one another in the end, I know that neither of us really wanted what happened to happen. And I cry because somehow I know that we’ll both be okay anyhow. And thankful it didn’t last.

And that’s bittersweet man. It’s just so fucking raw.

That in 50 years, I’ll talk to my grandchildren in the way my grandmother speaks to me now about her past romances and riled affairs. With blurred half truths and mishappen memories, a lesson or two about love to share on reflection. That look in her eye that people have when they playback on the years and all the people who came and went.

My ex and I may very well never see one another again in this life, we live in different countries, opposing worlds, age groups, and social circumstances. But we will always share a specific period together in what is ultimately a remarkably short existence. And that time was chaotic, and fun, and terrible, and exhilarating, and loving as it was cruel.

There’s something tender in all of it: to live still with the good and sad. It’ll make more sense later on. However we come to terms, we will.

And I cry because I’m relieved to finally feel okay with that reality.

Some people bring out our goodness, others show us our shadows.

I was a terrible partner objectively speaking. I made a lot of missteps, lost a lot of patience and empathy. I could not understand him and he to me, and therefore I was not right for him.

And it doesn’t matter what I think of him as a partner - only that I’m aware lately of the calmness in my days. And what I hope is a calmness in his that neither of us could give one another.

I read from American playwright Tony Kushner:

“All that matters is that you spare yourself nothing and wear yourself out and risk everything to find something that seems true. And if you fail to do these things, you torture yourself about your failures. And then get back to work.”

So on we go, as everyone does, dancing on the tip of a blade; a razor-thin margin between what it means to love someone, and when that means to free them.