Romanticising Falling Out Of Love

It isn’t everyday of late that I’ve been motivated to pick up the pen. While the world has been cursing 2020, I feel like a phoenix rising from the ashes. The past year has been as invigorating as dampening for me. While I struggled with uncertainties like everyone else, I also felt giddy with the anticipation of the unknown. I travelled solo and met some great people, I inched my way towards confidence with some amazing friends by my side. Yet, through it all, I also felt the incessant and unrelenting societal tug to stick to the familiar, to abide by the status quo and to settle into a comfort zone. 

What being alone in the mountains for a fortnight taught me most was that our fear of stepping out into the unknown is much worse than what awaits us. We’re afraid of dipping our toes into new waters. But if and when we finally do, we realize that the water and our feet could both grow quite fond of each other. By taking off and being on my own, I discovered that my sense of wonder was alive. I discovered that I was ready to take on the uncertain, and that for all my affinity for comfort, it was also free-spiritedness that I craved. 

Why then does the world ask us to choose the path most travelled on?

There is much to be said for the longevity of love, relationships and marriage. Most of us have grown up believing in happily-ever-afters. But there is also something to be said for the end of things - a tapering off, a falling out, a bottomless void giving way to bold change. There are times when I wish new beginnings were romanticized, even if they may not stand the test of time.

There seems to be too much emphasis on forever, and very little on for now. 

Parents seem to be obsessed with children making the right choices. The trouble with that is that no one really knows what the right choice is. What they instead end up advocating, is the common choice. 

What if we were taught to welcome uncertainty? What if we celebrated our mistakes? What if we found a way to be grateful for what has passed even if it doesn’t last? What if we romanticized falling out of love? 

Breakups are always hard, but a lot of it also has to do with more than losing the person we break up with. More often than not, especially as we grow older, so much of our lives become entangled with our partners’. Breaking up with a partner becomes equivalent to breaking up with life as we know it. One feels trepidation at not only the thought of losing a companion, but also the stigma attached with it (especially in our country). As a recent divorcee, this year has been tough for me. I had to let go of someone I loved and saw a future with - someone I spent more than a decade with. Yet, the most difficult part of letting go was dealing with others’ disappointment.

Through it all, I wished that people could find it in themselves to treat my situation with empathy and understanding and lend me optimism for the future. To my dismay, I was doled out negativity and intimidation. 

How much more beautiful it would be if break ups were treated as rites of passage, if falling out of love was accompanied by the reminiscing of good times and an innocence for the future. For many, falling in love is a transcendental experience - a complete losing of oneself until it is difficult to think of oneself singularly. Falling out of love is also accompanied by a similar losing of self as an abyss of melancholy takes us over. Everything we created with another feels like a waste and on the precipice of dissolution. What if that weren’t the case? What if we were taught to treat what we create with someone else as an individual entity? What if we spoke about our exes freely and lovingly? What if we allowed love to pass through us and did not try to stop it when it struggles to leave? What if we were allowed to move on just as happily as we moved into the relationship? 

Falling in love is a beautiful feeling - it affords us the opportunity to share ourselves with someone else. But falling out of love can be beautiful too - it affords us the chance to find ourselves again and hopefully, love ourselves too.