BIG UNKNOWN
BIG UNKNOWN
By: Nicole Gustave
Editor-in-Chief
Relationships always start with promises and end with those promises being broken. At least that’s been my experience, so I decided to write this piece based on my own unhappily ever after. Now, I am not one to play the bitter ex, nor the damsel in distress, or even look for a sympathetic sigh from my readers, so don’t expect this to be a “drag him through the mud or a put him down” read. After all, I must maintain my classiness, and take the high road. I felt the need to expose myself in this way to heal by sharing it so that maybe some of you will read this and identify with some if not all of it. The wounds that I bear will take time to heal, and hopefully if my readers are going through some of the same things will be healed or at the very least start healing.
Image courtesy of Unsplash | Photographer Sam Burriss
So, you may be asking yourself why the title: BIG UNKNOWN, well let me tell you, I was watching the movie Widows which by the way is an awesome movie, but it wasn’t the movie that gave me the title of this piece but rather the end of it. As the end credits scrolled there was a deep haunting song being played, the song was being sung by one of my musical heroes Sade. Now, I won’t spoil the movie for you by sharing the plot and ending, but I will tell you that as the song played I began to cry. I was surprised at how much this song resonated with how I had been feeling over the breakup. The song starts with a bluesy intro, followed by deep piano chords and Sade comes in with a wounded vocal ooh, ooh, followed by a mellow moan, and then the lyrics hit, “only love could bring us, bring us to this bitter plane, only one of us who’s gonna walk away, here in the deep below that only darkness really knows. I’m hoping for a humble seed to grow” I got to the middle of the song and that’s when I heard the verse that made me scream, she sang with a high pitch when coming to the main verse: “I’m just trying to hold on, I’m falling in the dark below, I feel I’m falling in the big unknown” I didn’t even wait for the song to finish before I rushed to my computer and straight to iTunes, and downloaded the song, it was in that moment I heard my pain’s anthem over and over again.
Image courtesy of Unsplash | Photographer Diana Simumpande
Now when I tell you that I played that song over and over and over again. According to my iTunes, I played that song over 100 times a day, I just couldn’t stop listening to the lyrics and singing them loudly almost as if I was singing to HIM. I needed to hear those words because it was what I had been feeling. I was just trying to hold on, but I was falling into the dark below, it didn’t dawn on me that I was living in a big unknown. You see, my ex came back into my life after breaking up with me in a text argument we had over politics. Yes, you read that right, politics is what ended our relationship the first time. I won’t get into the specifics of what the argument was about, but I am a liberal democrat and he is from another country, so our views on various political issues based on our country’s leadership didn’t match up. Let me say for the record that he is in the United States, doesn’t need a green card, and we had a physical relationship. I don’t do the whole 90-Day Fiance thing, nor do I do electronic dating. There were red flags when he visited me the first time around, but I overlooked them. Turning a blind eye to it all, it could have been due to my lack of confidence that I could find someone more suited to me, perhaps my feeling like I was doomed to be alone for the 2nd half of my life, or out of sheer desperation chose him over my feelings. An entire year passed, and with each day I convinced myself with self-empowering songs that I was better and stronger, but underneath it all, I longed to have him back. I got what I wished for because he came back, and all it took was a text message that he sent to me. I felt this incredible urge to jump for joy, and run around my apartment singing at the top of my lungs, but I remained composed when texting him back. I didn’t want to give him any sense of my happiness for his return. He came to my home, stayed a couple of days, and just like that we were back in love with each other.
I couldn’t believe it, we texted, and called, and at no time did I think that he would do what he did. What did he do you ask? The short of it was he ghosted me. He sent a loving text one morning, I responded back lovingly, and the next day I texted him but received no response, I called him, and no answer and this went on for days. I became worried, the what-ifs came in waves in my mind. I began asking myself what if he’s in the hospital, what if he’s deported, but the one WHAT IF I didn’t want to ask myself was WHAT IF HE LEFT ME AGAIN? I stalked his Instagram and saw that he was just fine. I dared not message him there, instead, I began feverishly calling and texting, but again no response. I sat on my bedroom floor and stared at myself in my mirrored closet door, then the tears began to flow yet again. I did that for a couple of days, going onto his Instagram and seeing his posts, all the while wishing that I could scrub him from my memory.
Image courtesy of Unsplash
I was in this storm, pushing against the winds of change, and trying to beat back the water that poured down on my soul. How and why replaced the what-ifs, how could I be so blind? why did I fall for him again? I realized in my moment of anger that he gave me my freedom and that he understood he was not man enough to add any real substance to my life. I don’t want to meet a new HIM, I don’t want to hear the words I love you, but rather I want to feel love. I will love again, just not right now, I need to find myself in what I lost, and only then will I be able to gather the strength and find my courage to walk outside in the sun so that HE whomever HE will be can see me. I thought I was better off without him in the beginning, allowing him to come back a second time revealed that I was better because of him ghosting me. You see, I thought I was weak due to my behaviors, the crying, the anger, and the frequent visits to his Instagram, but in those behaviors, I found my strength. Crazy, right? I was strong enough to stop crying, and in doing so I overcame my anger, stopped checking his Instagram, and began shifting my focus to me. I will not say that I am one hundred percent better, but what I will say is that I am better today than I was yesterday. Time heals all wounds, and with that being said I close with the final verse of BIG UNKNOWN: “I will rise, I will rise, I will rise again, a humble seed will grow”. Yes, Sade, I will rise again.
Images courtesy of Unsplash | Photographers: Sam Burriss and Diana Simumpande |
Photographers are not affiliated with DHMICON.com, and images are used for illustrational purposes only.
