In a dimly lit bar somewhere in New York, the words I Still Love You are scribbled hastily on a bathroom wall. I wrote these words for you. They rest inconspicuously amongst a sea of hundreds of other handwritten, drunken bathroom love notes – names of lovers, anniversary dates dating back as far as decades, the anguished rhapsodies of broken hearts – they are modern-day cave drawings preserving the ghosts of failed romances from years past. I remember making my four-word contribution and slumping down onto the floor with tears in my eyes, sharpie still in hand. My ex and I had broken up about a month prior, and my heart was reeling from relationship PTSD combined with one too many gin and tonics. On the other side of the bathroom door, a fellow bar patron with a full bladder was banging impatiently. Zoom out a bit further and bodies were making their way in and out of the crammed building. Further still, a bustling sidewalk lined the perimeter of the bar. It was a street where hundreds of thousands of souls were making their evening commutes home in the city that never sleeps. There was so much life to experience just a few feet away from where I sat and cried, but in that moment, this bathroom stall and those four words I’d written felt like the entire world.
It is both a comforting and frustrating feeling to hear the words Time Heals All Wounds. On the one hand, it offers the promise that one day you’ll no longer hurt over the person you were with. On the other hand, it insinuates that in order for you to heal, you must abandon the idea of ever being with this person again. Accept that the future you’d envisioned for you both can no longer be, and that your plans must be rewritten. Accept that one day you’ll meet someone else, as will they, and the two of you will become little more than strangers who harbor secrets – the secrets being suppressed memories of a past love that no one else in the world but the two of you could know; little ghosts that haunt your dreams on random nights.
Does that sound depressing? Truthfully, I struggled to write this blog post more than I’d like to admit. I think it’s because initially, I wanted to write something uplifting and encouraging to those going through a breakup. I wanted to write how empowering and liberating a breakup is and how you’re able to “find yourself” and blah blah blah – but I found myself staring at a blank screen, unable to find the right words. And I realized it’s because I was lying to myself. The truth is, breaking up fucking sucks. Break ups are ugly and messy and are rarely ever a one-and-done deal. Break ups mean long, drawn out nights staring up at the ceiling, beginning to type out texts and then erasing them. Break ups mean feeling completely alone in a room full of people. Break ups mean drinking harder than you usually do, leading to doing things you never thought you would do. It means questioning who you even are anymore, questioning who your ex is, questioning if the two of you were for real or if it really was just another casualty written into The History of Failed Relationships. It takes ahold of your life like a plague; even defines you for a time.
I guess all I can do is repeat the stupid cliché that time heals all wounds, because as much as you think you’ll never be able to move on, somehow you just do. You won’t wake up one day and just determine that you’re over it – instead, you start to notice it progressively through these tiny, everyday breakthroughs. Like, for the first time in a long time, you’ll be driving to work in the morning and bust out singing to a song on the radio. Or, you’ll dance in the mirror like an idiot while you’re getting ready to go out with your friends one night. Or, on a random weeknight you’ll get the urge to go to a bar by yourself, and you’ll drink and strike up a genuine conversation with the bartender. There it is, the “you” that was buried beneath the ashes for so long resurfaces little by little. It happened to me and it will happen to you too, promise. Moral of the story: There is no shame in drunken bathroom love notes. They serve as reminders that we came, we loved (we moved on) and so, we conquered.
