Oddly enough, the most honest moment in a relationship usually arrives once it's over. It's the "speak now or forever hold your peace" part of the wedding, only inverted. You tell the couple why they’re terrible for each other, and the couple is you. Suddenly, the preceding months or years have an air of unreality—like they never happened at all or turned out to be one long Christmas Ghost hallucination. When my last relationship ended, it didn't seem possible that, mere days before, I'd have probably dove into traffic to save a person I'd now dive headlong into a mound of summertime garbage just to avoid seeing at a crosswalk. Of course, being newly single sort of feels like diving into a pail of garbage all the time.
The first few days of being alone again hit like OxyContin withdrawal. Or, at the very least, like a juice cleanse. Only instead of toxins leaving my body, about a shallow lagoon of Merlot floods into it. All the many things I took for granted about the relationship appreciate in value as they suddenly become unavailable. So many inside jokes and dumb little rituals lined up in my mind like a continental breakfast buffet, wheeled away by an overly officious concierge just as I arrive, famished.
This absence manifests itself everywhere. I'm keenly aware of a certain G-chat window's negative space on my computer screen all day. Unfortunate coworker fashion choices go criminally underreported. The pertinent details of which falafel place I did for lunch are lost to the ages. My day's narrative simply loses its primary audience, as though cancelled due to low ratings and frequent profanity. I could continue the broadcast on Facebook, dispatching glossy post-breakup PR or the romantic distress bat-signal of Sade lyrics, but being heard is not the same as feeling known. Nothing can substitute for the presence of an actual human person who knows most of your secrets and still somehow wants to make out with you.
The interior of your average Love Cocoon is generously swathed in a level of comfort usually extended only to newborn infants and Greek shipping magnates. When this sensual haven falls away, returning back to the larger world is disorienting. You blink your dewy eyes in the light. You can't quite remember who you are, and nothing makes any sense. It's like snorting bath salts while suffering from Memento-disease; there's bound to be collateral damage. Merging with another person until you become each other's spirit animals subtly changes you in a bunch of ways that quietly annoy everyone else. The metamorphosis chips away at any individual quirks that might abrade the relationship. Gone is the part of you that used to make up silly songs in the shower or found kombucha kind of disgusting. Instead, there's this new you, smoothed-out and cocooned. You forget what you’re really like, having opted for what one person likes you to be like.
After you leave the Love Cocoon, it's bewildering to be out there; this new sanded-down you who is not really you. But then, like someone who has defected from Scientology or the Borg, you get your old identity back. Your rough edges return, extra stubbly. Perhaps some habits discarded during the relationship remain that way, but these mostly pertain to hairstyle. All the other decisions you now have to make alone again force you to reconnect with the person you were, the hardwired you, and take control of who you'll become. Whether it's any improvement at all is another story.
by Joe Berkowitz, The Awl | Read more:
Illustration: Joanna Neborsky
