The Sky is Less Blue for the Heartbroken

By: Sophia B.

The worst type of person is a jealous person. A girlfriend jealous of any other girl their boyfriend has previously dated. A boyfriend jealous of the men in his devoted girlfriends past life. A friend envying another friend and resenting them for everything they think that person has that they do not. Jealousy is a disease, and it spreads rapidly.

I dated a boy, not a man, when I was younger. He may still be a boy now, I’m not really sure, but at the time and under the florescent lights of a crowded fraternity party, he was a jealous boy. Watching my every move the way a guard watches a prisoner, if I talked to another man the night was utterly and unavoidably ruined. If my gaze happened to be in the direction of another man, I would find myself in my room with swollen eyes from crying and screaming and a disoriented brain that didn’t understand why on earth I was allowing myself to believe that this is what I deserved.

The attachment theory tells us that how our caregivers raise and treat us during infancy and childhood, foreshadows our future adult personality’s ability to trust, communicate, love, and behave in various relationships. I hardly knew my mother from the day I was born until right now as I am writing this; although so badly do I wish that I did not have to type that out. So badly do I wish that I had been raised by a caregiver who taught me that I was safe in their arms, that I could trust them, and that they would never leave me. My debilitating fear of abandonment still looms over me like polluted air. Anxious attachment is my attachment style, which involves a deep fear of being left behind; the way my mother did to our family.

I fear the slice of possibility pie that my boyfriend will leave me for another woman or fall into the pit of infidelity. My mom did this, so isn’t that how every relationship is supposed to turn out? This is all I knew growing up. I am not a jealous person. I am a deeply frightened individual. My worst fear is being left behind by love.

The boy I previously mentioned was a jealous individual. Most of our nights ended in him slamming my bedroom door and telling me that I would never be loved. If I looked at another male, unintentionally your eyes drift from on spot to another, I was laughed at and told that I would “never get anything better than” him. Directly after this emotionally disproportionate routine of *haha I don’t give a fuck you stupid bitch* and *you’ll never find love or be loved* (defense mechanisms for a painfully insecure heart), it was violent anger. This looked so similar to the way I watched my parents interact with each other growing up, that I was convinced I was in a normal relationship.

My parents worked through it. They did not love each other, they cheated, they yelled, they didn’t live together, and one of them left our family, but they worked through it without an official divorce. This was what I assumed would happen to me. All this emotional and physical abuse was normal, and you’re just supposed to work through it even if you’re the weakest and saddest you’ve ever been. Right? Wrong.

The sky is less blue for the heartbroken. The world moves at a different pace.

I was not heartbroken over the previously mentioned boy. I was heartbroken over a different boy before him; the true love that I had finally found. My world moved slower. Time dragged on. I gave up. I forced myself into the relationship with the previously mentioned boy to make up for the love that left me behind.

I just needed to be held by someone. It did not matter that my heart hardly skipped a beat when I saw him. It did not matter that in no way did we have any similarities. It did not matter that his music taste sucked the life out of me or that I could hardly find a Band-Aid in his bathroom cabinet because of how filled with empty pill bottles it was. It did not matter that I lay awake with tears in my eyes. I just needed someone to fill the ridiculously empty and sorrowful hole in my heart. I needed company and I needed to feel like I too had someone. The one that left me had found someone; a pretty girl who seemed blatantly normal and the kind of person who would make the perfect, submissive, and mentally able wife. My relationship was a complete façade. It got to the point where I did not even flinch when I told people “oh I love him so much we just have the best time together,” because that lie was indented in my brain the way you memorize the alphabet.

Moving on, getting over, ripping the Band-Aid off, and wiping the board clean. It was finally time to relearn everything that I had ever been taught about love. I still struggle with the fear of being left behind. I am dating a good one now. Someone who has helped reteach me the definition of love and trust. I know I will get there one day, when the world proves to me that good people will not leave you behind.