Heartbreak, healing, and a few other things
By: Alessandra Jacob
Tags: Minorities, LGBTQ, Healing, Heartbreak

There used to be a time when I was imploding with things to say and write about this. I was frustrated 24/7, on the verge of crying at the mere mention of all of it. I had to carry a journal around everywhere I went because I couldn’t contain all the anger and sadness I felt. I still have that journal. On days when I need it, it reminds me of all the time that has passed. All the pages in it had filled up so quickly. I was surprised at how much I had to leak out of myself. I had never been much of a journal keeper before, but sometimes people aren’t the best receivers of emotions. Sometimes things happen that just hit too deep for anyone else to be able to have the patience to help fix but yourself. Heartbreak is one of them, and there’s nothing that’s going to be more receiving of one’s emotions than a paper and a pen…and maybe some tissues.

For me, it’s been a little more than two years, and I still feel a little off some days. I still feel a little unsettled. It’s almost as if when I was dumped and dropped by my ex I didn’t land on the ground quite right. My slow ascend back to where I am now, standing on my own two feet, shows a normal person, but the internal fractures from the way I was dropped, they’re still there. I know they’ll take time to heal. I know better than to rush the process. It’s better to lean in to pain anyways. It makes you more empathetic. It’s a slower way to heal, but in the end it’ll make you more whole. At least that’s what I believe so far.

I don’t know if it’s because I also happened to be going through a transitional period in my life. I don’t know if it’s because for the first time ever, I’ve had to live away from my own family and culture that I was born and raised in. I don’t know if it’s because for the first time ever I was able to feel love and admiration towards another female, but ever since then, I haven’t been able to look in the mirror and see—or even remember—the person I used to be before it all. On days when I feel reminiscent, I’d flip through photos of myself before I came to this country, and I’d struggle to recognize what it felt like to be that person in that photo. I’m so different now my own mother denies it. It kind of hurts, but I can share that some other time.

I still live in the same city where it all happened: the friendship, the love, the relationship, the break. I’ve found the places we live in always carry our stories and remnants of who we used to be and what we were going through. That’s something we can never erase. There used to be a time when walking through the buildings her and I used to spend time in became too painful. There are still some corners I can’t turn. There are still certain places I continue to visit, but each day those emotions fade to something more indifferent. It scares the life out of me that, that can happen. It scares me that one day someone or something or someplace can mean the whole world and the next it can mean close to nothing. It might trigger a memory here or there because our stories still linger in the places they happened in but the feelings — it’s the feelings that fade a little.

There used to be a time when the mere mention of her name in a conversation was a catalyst to an urgent desire to want to bolt to the next bathroom to cry and cry and cry and cry only to head home and spend the night, baggy-eyed and crying some more. I don’t cry anymore — at least not about the same things. There’s always going to be something to cry about. I am a softie at heart after all. I’ve learned not to waste my time feeling sad about an old hurt that will never change and an old love that was never good at apologizing for things in the first place. Now don’t get this as me trying to jab at my ex with that line. It’s something I knew about her when we were still just friends (although were we ever just friends…who knows). All I’m trying to express is hindsight is truly everything, just don’t beat yourself up too much about it later.

I’m still in my 20’s. I’m still young, and I know with time I’ll learn to listen to the signs more. Everyone does. That realization doesn’t mean I regret the experience I had though. Life’s too short to regret expressing love. It’s just too damn short. I’m sure there were people that judged me for loving her—not just because of our sexuality but because of some messy things that happened in our friendship before the love. There were people that listened to me cry and talk about how hard it was to go through event after event of anxiety-inducing interactions with someone I cared about in all kinds of ways. I’m sure it was those some people that made fun of me and spread rumors about me behind my back. Some of them still like to call themselves my friends. I’m sure to them I was making a fool out of myself. I was the person who hand wrote a letter and actually gave it to my ex in person after all. Maybe I did make a fool out of myself with that, but you know what? It showed me the true colors behind the people I thought cared about other people.

The only regret I have is that, that experience makes me afraid of sending a letter to an ex ever again. I know that sounds weird because everywhere you look online people tell you not to send that letter, but I think it’s a little tragic that after the love is lost we’re taught that it’s acceptable to treat each other like garbage and not feel bad about it. How is that okay? Why is that okay? Of course this statement doesn’t apply to abusive or harmful situations, but otherwise, we’re all human and should treat each other as such.

I don’t know where my ex is today. All I know is last I checked she had moved on and hasn’t felt the need to reach out since it ended. I was finally brave enough to pull the plug on having her on my social media. I couldn’t stand giving someone who’s ignored me in public since dumping me equivalent access to my online platforms as someone who respected me enough to acknowledge my presence in person. I wanted to gain some respect back for myself, and restricting her free access over my personal content was the one interaction I was able to control at the time. I don’t regret it, and it’s not like all is lost. We live in the digital age. People know how to reach each other.

I still have some hard feelings, and I know it. I also know that, that’s okay. Being dumped by someone who was your closest friend for several years before a relationship started is a tough thing to go through. There were mutual friends involved, lots of unnecessarily awkward moments, and living in a small city just makes it harder to heal from. I’m happy to say I can see that I have come a long way from how I used to feel.

Being an Arab-Canadian LGBTQ+ member makes going through things like this more difficult. Unlike others we don’t have support. We don’t have mom and dad to lean on, and in some cases there are certain friends we can’t share these struggles with out of fear. At least I have it easy. Some people live in places that would slaughter you for acting on a love like this. It’s tragic, but it’s true. Nevertheless, despite expressing these struggles to several well intentioned LGBTQ+ friends, many will not understand. As a member of an ethnic minority here in Canada and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I have seen, and experienced myself, something I have found to be true with most struggles: many who have not faced the struggle cannot truly know the struggle. This one statement could segway into a lot of things. It could apply to any kind of struggle there is, but no one can truly understand and emphasize with a struggle they have never experienced. Many people can comprehend and try to emphasize based on their own experiences that may be similar, but there’s a difference between that and understanding. Understanding is knowing to what extent to be empathetic.

I’m getting a sense that it’s at this point that this is starting to segway into another topic that might as well be a story in and of itself, so I’ll only build on with one more thing:

Many who have not faced the struggle cannot truly know the struggle, and that is why inclusive representation in higher places is key to building empathy and policy that takes into account the complete human experience.