The End of Love/the Heart/Innocence/the Affair

For the divorced (substitute heartbroken, abandoned, broken up, separated as needed)  among you—

Remember this feeling?  It’s a moment from when you first start to realize that the end is cataclysmic and permanent–for me it was after Kevin and Paige had gotten an apartment together, and I received a certain text message from Kevin that set me blubbering my way through a movie in Century City.  Remember this feeling?

You’re doing the dishes or washing your hands or watching a movie, thinking about him, and suddenly, going over a memory in your mind, you realize, because of a certain phone call not returned or the nature of one of his new lies or just from your recollection of a certain sentence he said, that it was true, horrifyingly, terrifyingly, nauseatingly true . . .   he had stopped loving you?  Your mind had been darting around this monstrous notion for a while, terrified of touching it directly, and then, shockingly, here it was, so readily apparent in a single detail or choice of his, that you not only had to touch it with a fingertip, now you had to clasp it between your hands and squeeze it.  This realization–he does not love me–sent considerable pain through you, and your knees kinda buckled.  For the first time you saw your life without his companionship in it, a life that just a little while ago seemed inconceivable.  Then you started to cry. 

Remember that moment?  And how, after that first time, you dreaded having that feeling again, would do anything to keep it at bay, since with it came an overwhelming sense of blankness and loss where once something beautiful lived?  But no matter how much you dreaded it, not only did it happen again, it happened so regularly that it’s as if the first time had only opened the floodgates. 

And remember how, eventually, that moment was around so often that, unbelievably, you actually got used to it?  And although each time it was still a jolt, you knew you were getting used to it, and so you knew that soon it would be too late for him to save anything–because your love was about to die.  That knowledge of death made your breath catch up in your throat, and you started to cry, recognizing the end of love.  And then you felt a flash of relief.  Relief that your love was dying, like, “It’s almost over,  just hang in there, soon your heart will be put out of its misery”. . . But then you realized your innocence was gone, because the fact that you felt relieved at the death of the heart or the end of love for this person you had cherished . . .that was the saddest moment of all.