One Phase to Another

I've been single for just shy of three months. The relentless misery of late December and early January is closer and closer to feeling like someone else's relentless misery. I don't really talk - to my friends, to the internet - about Eric or the breakup any more. But there are scraps of sadness, of resentment, of love, of dashed hope, shards of unmitigated anger, all mixed up in a soupy brew of inedible nostalgia simmering under my day-to-day life.

It will be a long time before I forget how much it hurts to have your heart broken.

The simmer has become comfortable enough that most often I don't notice it's going on, hence the general silence. Occasionally, something will turn the heat up under the pot, and I'll boil over a little, maybe, but the heat is lower and lower each time, the occurrences fewer and further between.

I'm moving into the phase where I'm sad that I'm no longer viscerally sad. Where I wonder a bit about the truthfulness of my heart, my propensity for drama. If three months later I can feel this okay, did I really love him as much as I thought I did? If I had really loved him, wouldn't I still be puffy-faced and pulling my lips and tearing out my hair in despair?

Propensity for drama, right.

Poking around in my brainpan dredges this up: I did love him, as well as I could; when in top form, I am able to love people very much, and that is a gift; I could have loved him more and for longer than I was given the chance.

And this: he loved me, as well as he could; he made the right call; I am sometimes still upset he was right, but more often just distantly sad for us both; my life before dating Eric was a generally happy and satisfying place; my life after dating Eric is the same.

And three months is three months.