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Writer's pictureAubrey

Updated: Jan 30, 2023

I don’t know how to begin this post and I certainly don’t know how it will end. I know there are some things I need to say and I am hoping that I will find them here.


Despite the way that it may look, I don’t feel like I went off track. The past two years were a bit of a detour, but a detour that I absolutely needed. It was nice to be happy. And it was nice to love. It was nice also to be loved. I fell in love with my friend and it was the best decision I could have made.

And as it does, life has forced me here again. I know that I was not made for something neatly packaged. However, to be perfectly honest, I thought I had found something messy enough that it just might work. And it did work, I guess. Until it didn’t.


I probably look like the kind of person that can't stay in any one place for too long. And I am that kind of person. But with a person? I could stay with a person forever.


The truth is my weightless heart secretly dreams of being tied down. And though I rarely if ever make a promise, look through my phone and you’ll find golden notes littered with vows of lifelong love. I really do long for the person that will draw that quivering pledge from my American mouth.


And as flighty as I am, you might be surprised to know that I’ve never broken up with a person in my life. I always get in trouble when I say that. Maybe because it’s not true. Or maybe because it always makes the guy I was with look like the asshole. But most likely because breaking up means all kinds of different things to different people. I have in fact moved to an entirely different city before and only told my boyfriend at the time after the fact. Those are the kinds of things I do. Not breaking up per say. But, debatably, much worse.


You might say that the only reason I never break up with a person is because I don’t face the truth. That I make someone else do my dirty work because I can’t bare to do it myself. You might be right about that.

I don’t really know how to say goodbye to a person if I’m being honest. I only know how to make things better. I know how to walk away when someone else says their goodbyes. I know how to love a person who doesn’t love me. I know how to be impenetrable when someone sinks their teeth deep into my skin. But I don’t know how to say goodbye.

The unfortunate truth is that, while soul crushing, this part of the breakup is less eventful than I remember. Last time I went through something like this, a sense of unfolding lingered in the air just above the heartbreak. There was an opportunity to meet myself beyond the relationship. To fully give in to the person I really was and wanted to become, the person I had been holding back for too long.


However this time as I reflect on my relationship, there is none of that. There was no part of myself I had been holding back. Nothing that I want to do that I wasn’t doing. No grander version of myself that I can now attain to. No, ultimately who I had been with Zack, is exactly, who I am.


I am in the numb before the avalanche. There is not much to do when you are in a place like this. It leaves you with nothing to turn to but the very thing you know best. I am not an expert at anything at all really, but one thing I do know very well. I know how to go looking for something.


That is exactly what I was doing when I met Zack. Because that is what happens. It’s what always happens when you go looking for something. When you know how to follow your heart like it’s your own compass. Beautiful things find you. They just do.

And I don’t mean go looking for a person, God no. I mean life. I want to go looking for it. I want to know a place that I’ve known before. A place that is soft like cotton candy and whirls like a tempest. I’ve been there. Several times. It is so lovely.


You can’t find it in meditation, although you can try. It does exist there, sure, but it’s simply unlikely you find it there fully. It exists in the in betweens of your life. It exists when you fall in love and when love turns its back on you. Those are the places you find it.


It is so much like the wind you know, in that it is so generously kind to a broken heart. It is soft like fur, curling up in your lap, letting you know that you are not alone.

Neverland still sings to me, especially in these times. I have never felt more at home than when I catch a glimpse of it. Or when it catches a glimpse of me. I know things that are simply not real. They are too good to be given such a ridiculous label. They are so much better than real. They are true.


That is the place I want to be, in the unreal, where all things are true. That is where I will go. Where I go best. Where I go looking.


For something beautiful maybe. Something profound. Something that I’ve known before, but never caught. Something ordinary no doubt. That is where it always is. When the ordinary turns in on itself. You get to see its colors. The way they rage that violet pink.

I have no doubt that that is why I go. And why I go alone again. These colors, they don’t wait. They know. And they bloom with your every step toward the light.


It’s sooner than I thought. As it always is. But it’s time.

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Words and musings by Aubrey Pond

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