Thread by @priya_ebooks

heart-time moves so differently from regular time but they align in the end. i want to share something with y'all

i fell in love at 27. it was the first time i'd ever fallen in love with anybody. yes i know that's late, that's just how it happened for me

and i think it was the deeper BECAUSE it happened so late, you know?

all respect to my previous boyfriends - who were lovely, i liked them very much - but they just hadn't unlocked that THING in me

i fell in love much later, and boy oh boy it was no regular love

he was wild and weird and wonderful

sadly, he was also a cruel and abusive man. this made the relationship some of the most intense torture of my life

i dated him for more than a year. i broke up with him two years ago. i won't go into the details of that. suffice it to say, it was a difficult time for me

i shaved half my head. i lost half my mind. and i broke all of my heart

people said "you'll feel better" and i used to scoff. i couldn't IMAGINE feeling better. i knew that OTHER people got over shit. i knew i never would. they just hadn't felt MY pain

there's this scene in Annihilation where Natalie Portman's character stands in her empty bedroom, after she loses her husband

she just stands there. vacant. it's heartbreaking

that's how i felt for TWO years to be honest

i had a good life after i broke up with him. i wrote a book. i lived a rich life. i remembered that people could be kind and the world didn't always hurt or scare you

but every time i heard this fucking song

no matter what i was doing. where i was. i would fucking WEEP

it felt like that emptiness would never go away, you know? like this was just my life, forever

i'd never get over it. getting over things was something that happened to OTHER people

today i was in a cab and this song came on and for the first time in years i didn't cry when i heard it

for the first time in a very long time i didn't feel fundamentally empty inside

i don't have any wisdom to offer but this - you DO get over things. life goes on. you do get over people. time drags you by the collar and moves you on. even if you're kicking and screaming. it moves you relentlessly on

i'm so sorry to anyone who's been in love, or is currently in love, with a person who's not good for them

i know it feels like you'll never get over it. you'll never get over them. but that feeling is a LIE

'love is so short, but forgetting is so long' yes Neruda was true. but it really does stop hurting in that vital and immediate way

it goes from critical, 24/7 pain to waves of grief

to a softer ache
to a mild anomie
to a forgetting
and finally - when you're 80 - to an almost pleasant nostalgia (i imagine. i'm not there yet lol)

you WILL meet other people and you WILL fall for them and you WILL get over that painful love. i promise you. it happened to me. it happens to everyone

it will happen to you

you don't know WHEN you will get over someone. as i said, Heart Time isn't regular time

but baby, they align in the end. they get there. i promise