Aftermath

Who takes the breakup hardest?

It's such an odd and horrible place to be in where once you slept side by side and shared those once sweet secrets, now threatening.

The aftermath of a relationship must be largely dictated by the nature of it's end - how did it end?

Did it end in impassioned rage: each one tore at the others vulnerabilities with such savage vigour that only one who knew someone so well, would know how to do so, where to strike and yield the most pain?

There's this fantastic poem by Sylvia Plath called 'Aftermath' about a burning building that I can't help liken to a broken relationship, for several reasons.

1. "Compelled by calamity's magnet they loiter and stare" 
Don't you love how, like when you were first together, the end of your relationship signifies the rebirth of the gossip surrounding your relationship? Except this time, rather than being only mildly annoyed by the sudden interest in your life when before you were boring and pass-over-able, you have to hold back a tsunami of mixed emotions - the dominant rage and sadness coupled with the remanence of love and emerging, distant and desperately hopeful closure.

2. "No deaths, no prodigious injuries"
To this day I am happy to say I've never experienced grievous bodily harm at the hands of a breakup, and I'm awfully sorry to anyone who has - although I'm glad you're shot of the arsehole you gorgeous thing you. With this assumption in mind, I'd also like to ask how you can love someone so much it hurts? And how those logical reasons (or illogical) were in fact logical at all if being apart hurts so much? When people tell you love hurts, they're right.

3. "Her ruined apartments, taking stock of charred shoes, the sodden upholstery"
Perhaps the longest living aspect of the break up aftermath. The stuff. Your t-shirt that I'm wearing and the exchanged christmas present and the train tickets from our first and last date and the photos and the world clock on my phone that tells me what time it is where you are.

I wonder what you're doing, even if it's breakfast time for you, even though you don't eat breakfast I wonder if you've changed.

I wonder if you're happy and if it hurts for you as much as it does for me.

I wonder if you're healthy, I worry that you're not.

I get through the days of horrible news stories in your vastly vague vicinity by smiling, resisting the temptation to ask if you're ok, waiting for a pity text to let me know it's not so bad you can't text.

Do you still smoke? I miss the smoke on your t-shirt, it's toxic perfume filling my lungs whenever I was near you, it's bitter taste on your lips the last time I kissed you.

I wonder if mine were the last lips you kissed. I wonder what I did wrong. I miss you.