You look at your phone. Then you look out the window. Then back at your phone and out the window again, waiting for the universe to bestow upon you some un-miss-able sign that what you are about to do is absolutely the right thing. Finally, and with one last final breath, you open the car door and plunge into a world devoid of oxygen and saliva.
It is okay to lose interest is someone and grow and change. It is okay not to know who you will spend the rest of your life with, what you will do career wise and what you’ll be interested in in ten years time.
There they are. Standing, smiling, a little confused. Pretty sure but still unsure of what is about to happen. You can see them analysing you, looking you up and down, trying to gauge why you have called them here on such short notice. And so you walk up to them, give the ever-so awkward and obviously last, one-armed (two if you’re feeling generous and sympathetic) hug and quick peck and ask them to sit. This is the point where you feel the tension spike and the blood start to pound around the ears.
There face has turned a little green. You begin to speak, yet nothing emanates, your mouth just stupidly gaping for a few seconds until you finally find your words.
‘I think we should just be friends.’
‘I don’t think we should see each other anymore.’
‘I think we should see other people’
Oh wait. I have one more.
‘It’s not you, it’s me.’
Then they ask you for ‘a moment. Then they turn away. They may cry. They may even become hysterical (depending on how great a lover you may have been). You think back to the moment that Tal Bachman sings about how ‘she’s so lovely’ and suddenly he or she isn’t anymore and you have no idea what Tal was talking about.
Then they start with the questions. And there is so many of them.
‘What could I have done to make this better?’
‘Is there someone else?!’
‘Do you just want to do things on your own?!’
‘Did you never love me?!’
You don’t even know how to answer because all you are thinking about is the car and how it can accelerate out of the current situation, fast. And that resonates with what you want to do. But for their sake you stick around and try and explain why you have had a change of heart. Break ups are not the most pleasant things and I always feel more for the person who has to end the relationship.
Sure, while it is obviously hard to hear that the person who you once thought nothing but greatness of no longer wants to see you, the initiator has spent at least two weeks thinking of the least horrible way to deliver the news with minimal casualties and no collateral damage for the sake of the owners and (hopefully still) customers of the coffee shop.
The initiator (or whatever you like to call the one ending it – I’ll leave it up to your imagination) obviously had good enough reasons to break it off, whether or not the other agrees. I’m taking this time now, to make a point. People at this age, our age, the good old ripe age of twenty-something have spent a good few years growing in the gap after high school and continue to, way into their late twenties. Hell, if the show F.R.I.E.N.D.S is anything to go off, then we continue to grow well into our thirties.
And I am not talking just physically, but spiritually and mentally and in all the other dimensions. We learn about new pathways to wellness, new journeys (or several) to careers and meet a bucket load of new, different and interesting people along the way. And the great thing is, each of these new and exciting things adds to our persona.
We are no longer interested in the same things anymore. The unfortunate truth of it however, is that this growth causes us to lose interest in some people and feelings fade. I think what I am trying to say is that it is okay. It is okay to lose interest is someone and grow and change.
It is okay not to know who you will spend the rest of your life with, what you will do career wise and what you’ll be interested in in ten years time. Heck, it is okay not to know what you will be doing next month, or even tomorrow. Paths may not be apparent nor clear right now, but just know that who you are becoming will become clearer the further you go.