The end of a relationship is shit.
Particularly if your partner ends it.
While the immediate loss is horrible - what comes after is awful: the questioning of one's self worth - the introspection and doubt - I mean - if the one you love has stopped loving you back - what does that say about you?!
The thing is - it does kinda work both ways.
If you've truly loved someone and find yourself falling out of love - realizing that the relationship doesn't have a future - shit is coming your way too. You're about to inflict significant pain on a person you care deeply about - the last person in the world you would want to hurt - and yet here you are - about to cause some serious damage to their psyche.
That's where I found myself.
Three years into a relationship - all the way through college - families connected, friends intertwined, financial commitments to accommodations and immediate futures - and yet I knew it had to end. The future was coming and for better or worse - I did not see her in mine.
It was after graduation, I'm sitting in my parents' garden in Germany - on the patio - doors open - the second movement of Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major, D.956 on the stereo - and I'm staring into space - wrestling with all of it - holding all these emotions: angst, fear, love, despair, hope - just - all of it - and then - the music takes me…
Overwhelms me.
And I cry.
Like - ugly cry.
Just sobbing and allowing the tears to stream down my face unabated.
And still the music played - so I just sat there and lived with it: how I was going to make her feel - how it was going to make me feel - how our friends would feel and how our futures would change - and then the strangest thing happened - as the silence surrounded the end of the Allegretto - I felt - better.
Drained sure - physically and emotionally - but weirdly calmer - and prepared - and ready.