It’s been an awful year. There’s really no other way to put it. And this is coming from a self-declared ‘eternal optimist’, so that says a lot. Awful is the overarching sentiment, a summation of sorts.

That’s not to say there weren’t moments of joy, wonder, and happiness, because there were. I am particularly adept at seeing the bright side of life, the cup half full, the silver lining. As a practitioner of gratitude, being aware of my blessings and expressing thanks for them is who I am. This year however, I’ve lived beneath a cloud, and all of my efforts to hold onto happiness, have fallen short.

My life, like all of our lives I imagine, is split into parts. A bit like a puzzle, uniquely varied, and when put together, an image of our existence. The pieces in my life’s puzzle include my children, family, friends, community, colleagues, as well as my work, fulfilling my life’s purpose, my health, community service, my home, financial stability, etc. And there is also the big stuff that is far out of my control; geopolitical issues, the economy, global health equity, social justice, etc.

The piece I no longer have is a partner, a significant other. In 2022, after thirteen years, I found myself separated.

‘Found’ isn’t really the correct way of putting it, now is it. I didn’t find myself separated, it didn’t happen to me; as much as I got separated, I made the very difficult decision to chose a different path.  

No matter the circumstances that lead to the end of a long-term relationship, the loss of what was once believed to be possible, is very painful. One by one, I had to let go of the dreams I had for what my children’s lives would be, for what my life would be. There is / was little I wanted more in life than a family, one that stayed together, and a partner, who would be with me for always; a companion, a confidant, a witness to my existence. And I, all those things to them.

The awfulness which has covered most of the last year has been grief, grief and profound sadness. It does not come naturally for me to stop trying, nor to surrender. This however, was inevitable. I come from generations of women who endured, I was conditioned to accept the unacceptable. From the time I was a little girl, I understood my life would be lived in the service of others, not in a benevolent way, but in a ‘make yourself small’ way. And I did just that. I became smaller, until I nearly disappeared, melting into someone else’s vision of who I ought to be. I ‘allowed’ – and I use this word with great caution, because to allow does not mean to invite nor to accept, but that’s for another blog – I allowed myself to stay for far too long in an environment that slowly broke my spirit.

Whatever parts of me hadn’t been destroyed in the relationship, shattered the moment I acknowledged the end of my dreams. My dreams were the last pieces of a life I imagined, which I managed to hold onto.

Yet even in that acceptance, nothing got easier. Acceptance didn’t lift the weight pressing on my heart, it didn’t cause the clouds to dissipate, finally letting a bit of sun in. Acceptance simply took me out of survival.

Living in survival mode can sometimes be ‘easier’ than recovering from it.

Once, and if I’m honest, it happened very slowly and isn’t done happening yet, but once I realized I didn’t need to give my energy to surviving, I was forced to look back at the ruins that lay in the wake of a complicated life.

As someone who has experienced many hardships, I know that when you are in the thick of it, when you are busy surviving, negotiating, twisting yourself out of shape and beyond recognition just to make things okay, you don’t always realize what’s being destroyed around you. Nor how you are being destroyed in the process.

I had been denying what it was doing to me. I was convincing myself I was strong enough to brush it off, that it wasn’t getting under my skin, in one ear and out the other. I lied to myself. I lied because it was the only way to keep going. As long as I could compartmentalize, I could endure. I knew this about myself. I’ve always been very good at compartmentalizing. Like the song goes, ‘Smile, though your heart is aching, smile, even though it’s breaking…’ That’s me, a smile to the world, despite the agony that lives inside. I’ve learned how to live in one piece of my puzzle, momentarily shutting away the others. I’ve learned to focus my mind on the task at hand, ignoring the storm elsewhere.

No coping mechanism is sustainable. Everything, everyone has a breaking point.  

At the end of 2021 I left behind my dreams. I made peace with the end. A ceasefire was called. And that is precisely when the puzzle fell apart.

In the quiet I stood still. For the first time in a long time, nothing was coming at me. I didn’t need to anticipate, mitigate, I didn’t need to be vigilant and careful. I was safe.

I emerged from a decade long fog, unknown to myself, confused as to how I got to this moment. It may take longer yet, but I spent a good deal of 2022 looking, examining, trying to understand what brought me here.  

I saw the moments, fewer at the beginning, when we were not as we ought to have been. I saw where we might have gone wrong, where we began to grow apart, the values we believed we shared but didn’t. I saw the terribly difficult moments we were ill-equipped to navigate in a healthy way. I saw that we didn’t know how to resolve misunderstandings with kindness. We weren’t taught to express our needs softly, nor our fears gently.

There had been an absence of good role-modelling in both of our lives. And so, bit by bit, as conversations broke down, we didn’t know how to do the work of repairing the damage. Even issues we endeavoured to return to were met with frustration. Instead of being addressed, we began to ignore all the things we couldn’t reconcile. We worked around the difficulties but not through them.

2022 wasn’t the beginning of a new chapter, nor the end of one. It was the year of being lost, the scattering of puzzle pieces, across the house and across our lives.

Some relationships dissolve overnight. Maybe there’s a dramatic moment in which someone storms out or words are said and the next day bags are packed. But some relationships end slowly. We had reached the end of whatever was possible for us. Bursts of happiness were fewer and further apart.

In the past year I’ve cried so much, there were times I felt I could not cry any more. I cried for the loss of something I once believed might be amazing; for the difficulties my children were enduring, for how their lives were forever being transformed by this difficult change, this unwelcomed change. I cried out of fear for the future, for what I would now face alone.

And I cried for fear of aloneness.

I am not made to be alone.  

Rather, I count myself amongst the dreamers who look with envy at happy elderly couples, imagining they’ve spent their whole lives together, each other’s best friend, the person who knows the backstory to every inside joke. When I see tenderness between couples of thirty, forty, fifty years, I ache. I don’t know if I’m destined for that kind of love.

I am a puzzle, with a missing piece.