A Break Up Learning Curve

Despite being Out for a while, I have done a pretty good job of staving off The Big Bad Lesbian Breakup. I've seen it all around me in the lives of my friends and peers, the breakups that just shake you and break you, to a degree that the entire phase of your life in which it takes place is marked primarily by The Breakup itself. But I had never felt it myself until recently. I shielded myself from it easily early on in college by simply not knowing I was gay and dating men. Then, I let the relationship with my first girlfriend fly so far to the brink of death that all we could do was High-5 each other and wish each other well on our life journeys when it finally ended (Obviously, being lesbians, it wasn't that easy, but we managed to hate each other enough during our relationship that we didn't leave a lot of hate for the end).

The Big Bad Lesbian Breakup though, is quite the lemon of a juicy time in life, stuffed with so much pain, angst, self-deprecation, douchey-phases, special-places, drunk nights, inappropriate lays, and foot-in-mouth phone calls, that it is really not something you can just see to believe- it is something you have to live. Like I said, I've watched it unfold around me. Whether it was one party's major-cheating-fuck-up followed by a 2 year song and dance of alternately trying to hurt each other and get back together, or the slow demise of a beautiful domestic stead that everyone thought would last forever. Whatever the gamut, these dissolutions are all around us, blowing things out of the water every year or two, affecting friend groups and making Urban Family holidays awkward. It takes quite a bit of time to get to the part where the Bad Breakups slowly renegotiate themselves in part of daily life and the upheaval has subsided.

The shitty part about the Big Bad Lesbian Breakup, is that, from all I've seen and gathered, it is the one that is required to become a fully jaded, yet relationship appreciating, eyes-wide-open lesbian for all potential lasting partnerships. It's the necessary evil, the Big-Gay-Right-of-Passage that comes in your 20s somewhere in between Searching, Lost and/or Finding Yourself. I have always had an inkling that this might be true. Like when you think you have a cavity, but dance around making the dentist's appointment, or, when you don't want to check the weekend's damage to your bank account. I knew my BBLB was coming sometime, but I didn't want to see it.

Instead, I thought that I could slowly deflate the air from the tires of my relationship with my second girlfriend and avoid the Big One with passive comments like "what if I got a job in such and such city?" Or, "I can see us together forever, but what will we do for the next couple of years?" Or, and I don't see how I thought this wouldn't lead to catastrophe but, "I have feelings for ____, but it's just a friend crush."

It turns out that a clean slice heals a lot better than a haphazard, messy gash. In my version of this breakup, the messy, not-so-clean-slice adaptation, the let down became slow to the point of complete cowardice. In reality both in-denial parties were steamrolling their way towards the Big One with their unsuspecting thumbs up their asses. Try and avoid getting bitten, and you'll probably get maimed.

Maimed. There really isn't a better word. And its the kind train wreck you just don't know until you know, and when you feel it, its all you have room for for a while. You have to just give in and spend a little time in the weeds, which was something I never wanted to do. Silly me. Luckily, nothing lasts forever, not even a shit storm, and eventually learning begins. It starts with licking your wounds, then maybe with thinking about stitching them up, followed by a lengthy healing period, and then- the eventual scars. Not only is it a killer, but there is a wry irony to the reality that all the foot dragging and avoidance of facing the Big One now serves to just makes the whole process last longer.

As someone who is sitting pretty in the "stitching themselves up" phase, I cannot proffer wisdom, I am, after all, not on the other side yet. But there is an unforeseen peace in knowing right where you are at, even if it is not where you want to stay. I can see the stitches I've already completed, I can see how far I need to go. If I take baby steps and keep my eyes open, the weeds will be a distant memory in no time. For now I'll pat myself on the back for my acceptance of my Big Bad Lesbian Breakup, I'll laugh at myself for trying to avoid it, I'll forgive myself for being naive.

It is always said that you never stop Coming Out, which is true. Coming out includes years more work than just finding out in college that you have a palate for vagina. It includes a lot of unlocking, figuring out how to properly love and feel pain, and how to offer compassion when it is someone else's turn in the weeds. Despite how badly I fought having to go through this part, the storyteller in me is ready to embrace the dredges because when everything does shift and it's my turn to see some other sappy lesbian through their own Big Bad mess, I'm going to start out by saying: "Take a look at my awesome scar."