love out loud: breaking up is hard to do

Some of you may have noticed that things have been a little quiet around these parts of late. I’ve never felt that excuses make for particularly enthralling columns, but I’ve also long been a fan of disclosure.

So – Julio and I broke up.

It’s hard to be inspired to write about relationships when all you can think about is how awful you feel. I have half finished columns about mere exposure theory and facebook stalking, and whether relationships can survive cheating à la Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. But nothing has made it to completion of late, probably because I’ve spent the last couple of months trying to make sense of what was happening in my relationship with the boy who I truly thought would be the last person I’d ever fall in love with.

Julio has never been a fan of being written about, and so I won’t violate his privacy any further now. But on my end, it’s been weeks of uncertainty, longing, questions, and guilt. I know it’s the right thing, and we will be happier without each other, but that promise of “time heals all wounds” does little to lighten the weight when the expectations that you had of a life with someone have to be reassessed and discarded.

It’s been a huge learning curve for me. Learning that all the effort in the world isn’t always enough. Learning that love isn’t always enough, and that it doesn’t have to last forever. But learning that there can be a lot of love in endings too; love for him, and love for all the friends who have let me cry, offered me places to stay, and plied me with alcohol over the past few weeks.

Most days, I’m okay. Good, even. I’m finding a lot of gratitude and beauty in having had a wonderful relationship with a really special person. He was exactly what I wanted and needed over the past couple of years, and I’m thankful we loved each other without fear or apprehension (even if it meant I felt my heart break all over again when I moved back into my house and found a photo of us on my desk that he missed when he was removing all slivers of evidence that he’d ever lived there with me). He’s one of the best people I’ve ever known, but now we are finding our feet planted firmly on different paths.

And that’s where I want to be. I don’t know exactly where I’m going and that’s both exciting and overwhelming, but I do know that I want to keep moving forward. And it’s with that in mind that I also say goodbye to Lip and to this column.

It’s been an amazing experience, and pivotal in so many areas of my life. But I don’t feel that I can move forward if I’m spending time reflecting on my past relationships every fortnight. It may be a cliché but I’m determined to look ahead. I want to have many more beautiful moments with people and I want to make more mistakes (though hopefully they’ll be new ones). But I want to do those things in my own little space in the world and appreciate them for what they are, not for how I might write about them later.

So lovely Lipsters, it’s been a treat. I can only hope that some of you have derived at least some of the enjoyment from reading these columns that I’ve had from writing them. Take care, truly.

Dunja x

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