After his breakup, at first, Arwin tried to carry on with life. He tried to ‘be a man’ about it and just push on through, deny that this was going to hurt him. That lasted about a day and a half. Then the grief really sunk in and everything went to shit. He would have felt miserable anyway, but trying to deny your feelings instead of dealing with them is a horrible way to operate. It only makes things much, much worse.
He completely fell apart.
While bravely substitute teaching a grade-eight English class on point of view for creative writing, he broke down and cried like a baby. The girl whose writing he was critiquing thought he was upset because her writing was just that terrible. Then she started crying, too, and wouldn’t stop, and her mom was called, and then the parents came to the school and then Arwin ended up sitting with the school councillor. It was all very messy. He went through a whole box of tissues. They did not ask him back the next day.
While riding his bike, he was so distracted with his dark thoughts that he failed to notice people coming towards him on the riverside bike path. He swerved at the last second and landed in the river.
Unable to pull himself together, and without a partner to help with the bills, he was forced to give up the new apartment, losing his two-month deposit. Luckily, his kind and generous parents took him back in to their house in the suburbs. At his age, thirty, it was embarrassing, but, at the same time, he was thankful for their support and the fact that they didn’t look down on him for what he was going through.
He tried to return the new car. The dealership took it back — at half what he had paid for it only a couple of weeks earlier.
The dealer had put on a face so regretful that it had obviously been fake. “You know what they say: a car loses half its value the moment you drive it off the lot.”
“But I just bought it!” Arwin had protested. “It’s still brand new.”
“Almost new though. Almost. Not quite. Hafta sell it used now, don’t I? Sorry, pal. Take it or leave it. There’s nothing I can do.”
Unable to bring himself to argue the point or sell the car himself, he’d returned it, yet still owed a huge amount of money on it. That seemed wildly unfair, but what choice did he have?
While teaching soccer in an elementary gym class to a bunch of seven-year olds, he was so stressed out from thinking about Kelli that he lost his temper at the ball, then at the net and then got himself completely tangled in the nylon webbing. After much cursing, to the hilarity of the elementary kids, the unamused principal had to come and help bodily extricate Arwin. Arwin was very apologetic afterwards, but was still asked to go home early. And he was given a stern lecture about what kind of language is appropriate at a school.
The school board, while sympathetic to his emotional health, took him off their sub list and would only reinstate him once he’d pulled himself together. They even asked for a psychological evaluation to prove it. It was highly embarrassing.
From wild grief he fell into deep depression.
It felt like his whole life was falling apart around him and each sad turn only made his feelings darker and deeper. One moment he’d been happy and looking forward to marriage and a future with the woman he loved. He’d been training for one of his favourite events with a good friend. The next moment, he was curled up in bed all day long, wanting to hide from the world, unemployed and feeling very much alone.
The more we love someone, the greater the void when they’re gone. How much we grieve after a loss reflects just how much we loved.
On one level, he understood that he was depressed. He knew that he needed to break out of it at some point. He knew that exercise could help, but the thought of it made him ill.
He thought of nothing but his relationship with Kelli. His mind went over things, and then did it again, over and over. He became obsessed with trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Where had he screwed up and why? Why wasn’t he good enough for her anymore?
He tried to hang out with other friends but all he wanted to do was talk about Kelli and there was only so much of that that anyone was willing to take. Plus, his friends only seemed sympathetic on a very superficial level, even though now was when he needed them most. That turned out to be even more depressing.
He hated it. He hated feeling this way. He hated the world. It made him immensely frustrated.
He couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t take the pain, the unending misery and hopelessness and mounting frustration. He threw himself into every distraction. He binged on video games and movies, sitting for hours in front of the screen so that he wouldn’t have to use his brain. Because his brain only wanted to think about Kelli and how much he loved and missed her and how much it hurt not having her. But distractions didn’t work. They only delayed things until he was in bed, the lights out, and his brain had nothing to do but agonize over the breakup. Insomnia struck him every single night.
Finally, he sat down and came to a conclusion. He could not ignore his heart. He was still madly in love with her. He couldn’t live without her, didn’t want to. Things might be bad right now, but they could fix this. He had to fight for their love, fight for her. They could get through it and come out stronger on the other side.
Some people might question his continued desire for someone who’d betrayed him so badly. For some, switching their feelings on and off was easily done. They would have no problem walking away from someone and never caring about them again. But for Arwin, his love ran deep. He also tried to believe in the best in people. What Kelli had done was wrong and it hurt. But perhaps it was just a mistake; we all screw up at some point or see something we want and go after it without thinking about the consequences. Some difficulties are bigger than others but that doesn’t mean you just give up on a great relationship the instant things go wrong, do you?
She was his best friend. His time with her had been the happiest of his life. What would it say about him and the depth of his love if he was the type to just walk away without trying to fight for what really mattered?
He tried contacting Kelli numerous times, leaving messages, begging her to remember their love, to remember how many great years they’d shared, to come back, to fix their relationship. He texted her often. He wrote long, romantic emails. Sometimes, he’d feel proud of himself after, proud that he was fighting for her, that he really did love her. But sometimes, he hated himself for being so pathetic, and hated himself even more for the fact that she never replied, that she had no more desire for him or his love. No matter how hard he tried to fight for her, she never gave him the chance to do so. She just ignored him completely.
Why wasn’t she talking things over? Were there no regrets at all? Did she not feel bad for the way she’d ended it? Did she feel absolutely nothing for him? Was there no doubt in her heart at all?
If so, what did that mean? Had her feelings for him never been real? Had her love been fake the entire time they’d been together?
And so, increasingly miserable again, he dove back into unending hours of television and books and anything to keep him from thinking. Because if he stopped, all he thought about, was her.
The more time that passed, the more he felt that he was wasting his life and he hated himself for that.
At dinner one night, his always-kind father patted him sympathetically on the shoulder. “Don’t fight it, son. You’re grieving. It takes time to get through it. You were deeply, deeply in love with that girl. You can’t expect to feel better overnight. But you can’t just distract yourself forever. You must find ways to accept your grief and work through it while you slowly adjust to this new reality. The only way to truly make it through times like these is to grow as a person, and come out stronger and wiser for the experience. Trying to ignore your emotions will only make things worse, and leave you just as vulnerable the next time you have to go through this. Perhaps leave you even more vulnerable.”
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