“Letters to a Broken Heart” is a collaborative writing project between Sophia Hembeck & Lachrista Greco.
Read Lachrista’s response, the eight letter here.
Lachrista Greco, 24th June 2022:
“Ended my relationship tonight with someone I’m totally in love with because he’s unable to be emotionally in it anymore for a lot of reasons & kept pushing me away. Life goes on, I guess. I’m sad but ok. First time ever that I have broken up with someone. And I really didn’t want to…”
Sophia Hembeck, 30th June 2022:
“this is me now. heartbroken. newly single. no regrets.”
Dear Lachrista,
something has shifted. I stopped crying. At first, I didn’t even want to write it, in case it wasn’t true, in case I would find myself tearing up again the next morning but it’s been a week now, and nothing. I even rewatched all the horrible scenes in my head, you know the ones that usually make me want to crawl into a hole, that loop in my head till I can vent, to see whether I would feel triggered enough – unbothered. Or at least not a lot.
Of course, I’m not a robot now, it’s not that I am completely over it yet. There’s still a lot to heal but mostly a lot to learn and I can see that now. If someone had asked me a month ago what I would learn from this incredibly painful experience I would have wanted to whack that person with something heavy over their head.
But now I start to see things, I start to see him and myself and my pattern and it’s like that ending of Closer when Alice, the character who is played by Natalie Portman is lying in a hotel bed with her boyfriend who previously has cheated on her and now they’re sort of back together. He’s just entered the room, a rose in his hand, all excited and tickling her nose with the blossom. She looks at him with deadpan eyes and just says: I don’t love you anymore.
That’s how I feel now.
I wake up in the morning and for an hour or so I don’t think about him or later during the day I wonder and am unsure: have I thought about him today? – Probably. Because the whole breakup is still very much part of my current situation but it’s less intense. It’s shifting into an afterthought. I will move my stuff soon. In a week I will pack it all up.
And then the wedding.
On a full moon, with mercury shifting into retrograde : I don’t exactly believe in astrology but if it turns into mayhem, I will blame it on that. My friends have warned me. “Weddings can be emotional.” “Watching two people declare love to each other.” “Are you sure you want to go?”
It does seem a bit like a cathartic moment in a romantic comedy: seeing your ex at a wedding. Two months after breaking up.
In the meantime I’m looking for clues, for feelings undetected, making sure that I will be fine. Though I have to admit that it would be hard to know whether I am in denial about it all, for the brain is a master illusionist, anyway.
I just have to trust myself.
You wrote in your letter about how you feel this urgency to react. That if you don’t you will be forgotten or somehow miss your chance, that you don’t allow yourself the space to mull things over, and sit with the discomfort. I heavily relate to that. For two months I pretended that I would be able to finish a book of essays that I’m currently writing. Pretended that the deadline of mid-September would be fine. Whilst going through heartbreak and finding a new home. Of course, it didn’t work out. But the whole time I just couldn’t tell my publisher. I didn’t want to admit that this major life event actually affected my ability to work. That I would need space to process first.
I have started this exercise now. In my last letter, I wrote about how I am finally understanding my pattern. Or at least how I have found an IN. The moment when things usually go awry. And to change that. I call it the monkey dance.
It’s this feeling that some people will trigger in me where I have to “Dance monkey! Dance!” for them. Where I will push myself aside in order to be with them or where I will have to make myself grander than I am, be likable, be agreeable.
Which then will usually lead to a feeling – if not successful – of losing respect for myself.
The exercise to stop this is simple. I basically just notice that it’s happening. I watch the monkey rise inside of me preparing to move, to earn their keep, and then I pause. We lock eyes and I ask: Do you feel like dancing for that person?
Usually, I don’t.
I’m practicing it as much as possible. When I meet new people, that are possibly very handsome, when I hang out with friends or talk to my family. With every successful encounter, I feel better about myself. It feels like I am changing. Like that poem by Nayyirah Waheed that you mentioned in your last letter.
I get it now. I actually feel it.
Which is crucial for me because like you it has taken me a long time to understand “what I need, want, and deserve from a romantic relationship.” And I get that it saddens you that you feel like: Why didn’t I understand this before? Why has it taken me so long to finally see through it?
But I guess we’re both people that need to experience it, that need to fully feel it, in order to change. And that takes time.
You wrote about “This internal pressure of needing to find someone before it’s too late.” And I hear you. And the tiredness and the anger that is lying beneath that statement. Which I think are essential clues in how to move forward. I will no longer let people drain my energy and I will no longer suppress my anger when they treat me like shit: I will just leave.
It shouldn’t be this hard to love someone. I wrote in my second letter.
“It shouldn’t be this hard, right?” you asked in your last letter.
So yeah.
It fucking shouldn’t.
Sending a big hug and to more epiphanies to come,
Sophia
P.s.: This week will mark the end of the ‘Letters to a Broken Heart’ series for now. We will be back at the end of October with a final resume, a goodbye of some sorts, to see where we are after four months, how we have grown and what has changed. Thank you for coming along the ride. We hope this made you feel less alone.
Sophia Hembeck is a writer and visual artist based in Edinburgh. She is the author of the hybrid memoir/essay collection “Things I Have Noticed” and is writing the weekly Muse Letter on Substack.
“Letters to a Broken Heart” is a collaborative writing project between Sophia Hembeck & Lachrista Greco.
Read Lachrista’s response, the eight letter here.