Before I head to Thailand and officially sign off the last couple of years, here's one last thought on it all...
1) The first post-breakup supermarket shop will cripple you. No one tells you that something as innocuous as going for a food shop has the potential to draw tears to your eyes or make you want to collapse in a heap in the middle of an aisle. It just suddenly hits you full force in the stomach. It's hard to define, but I think it's the first time (often early on) that you're confronted with a tangible sense of loneliness. Shopping for one. It's heartbreaking. The freezer that used to be stocked full of yours and theirs... The little things that they used to like that you can't buy for them anymore. The love songs playing in the background. Truly, one of the worst.
2) You will have to actively stop yourself becoming a cynical son of a bitch everyday, for a long time. This one seems obvious on the surface, but actually it's not quite so straightforward. It's natural that you will feel hurt, betrayed and mistrusting just after a break up. But no-one tells you that everyday these feelings will get worse and worse if you don't actively stop yourself. No one tells you that we are all one step away from becoming emotional vacuums; that we can become the cliche of the hurt, cynical divorcee within only weeks or months. You can't understand how to deal with the bitterness and rejection inside you so you begin (consciously or unconsiously) to take it out on others and their happiness. The smallest flicker of happiness and you feel you have to crush it; often in your head, sometimes out loud.
But it's not because you're spiteful, it's because you're resentful, and you don't know how to get it back. You resent the niaive, happy-go-lucky personality you see in others, because it represents everything you once were, and are no longer. This compounds the anger you feel towards your ex partner and your current situation. But you have to make peace with yourself and let go of the poison you want to move on. No one tells you how hard it will be; you have to take it daily and with small steps.
Eventually you do get there.
3) Your friends do care... But in different ways. Weddings separate the casual friend from the genuine one. Both parties have to draw a line and decide what side of it they stand on. Long term break ups or divorces are no different. Some people who you thought were friends will betray you - it's inevitable - but the majority will stand by and be there for you, no matter what. Some will be in the foreground - helping, advising and listening. They'll be very good at it and you'll appreciate them more than you ever realised you could.
However, many will be in the background; you'll hardly notice them at the time and in all probability you'll think that they don't care. But overwhelming likelihood is that they do - they just have a different way of showing it.
Not everyone is an extrovert. Not everyone is good at knowing what to say. From your friend that asks you if you're ok today, to the friend that simply says 'hi' or shares a joke with you - they all care. But you only really begin to realise that when you've got through it all.
4) You feel like you've lost everything because you have lost everything. And that's ok. There are many, many times ahead of you where you'll feel like you've literally lost it all. You've anchored your happiness to one person for so long that the absence of them will make you question everything you thought you knew. Every ideal you ever had in your head about yourself suddenly has a jarring displacement. You lose so much more than your marriage / long term relationship; you feel like you've lost your extended friends and family; you've let people down. You've destroyed the idealistic id inside your brain because, by all accounts, you've lost.
But that's ok. Whilst it'd be flippant to say embrace it, you do have to accept it and understand it; don't pretend that it's not there in the hope that it won't be tomorrow. It will.
The best growth I ever had during those dark days was when I actually confronted how low I was and how much I felt lost, and accepted it. It's only when I did this that I began to move away from the stubborn perception if had of myself for so long and began to recreate a new a version. This, I guess, is what we euphemistically call growth.
5) Nights are - without doubt - the worst. Work and day-to-day life generally keep you busy and your mind distracted; the silent strangle of night does the exact opposite. Repressed thoughts from throughout the day have a nasty habit of bubbling up when you're lying in what was your marital bed in the dark. It's inevitable. If you sleep well you have either had a lot of Prozac, a lot of booze, or both. Your body is physically at its lowest ebb between 2am and 4am, so literally nothing will make you feel any worse about your situation than waking up at this time at flicking your brain on. I found 'white noise' apps helped immeasurably during this time.
6) You will never be the same again. I guess people do tell you this, but I don't think I ever truly appreciated quite what I meant until it happened to me. You can go though every low imaginable; you can confront demons, re-assess perceptions and push yourself in every single way you can think of. And eventually, you will feel like you've come through it; you will feel like you're 'healed', 'better' or 'a new person'.
But you will never - ever - be the same again. You just won't. That doesn't mean you have to become a cynical misanthrope. It just means that you have to accept that who you were before the breakup is never going to be who you are now. How could it? You can't go through such trauma - and it is trauma - and remain the same.
Essentially, your life is now a new paradigm. You are now you (who you were) plus someone new: a human hooked on hindsight and forever trying prove you're the better version because of it all. Whether you are or not depends entirely on you, of course.
7) You can be a better person and it is possible to be happy for your ex. Two cliches that seem at best idealistic when you've just broken up and at worst an invitation to beat the living shit out of the person that's just said it.
But they are true, albeit with a monumental amount of inner work and acceptance. Break ups and divorces can be one of the hardest things that you will ever have to encounter in your life and it is so, so easy to become the cynical tear in other ('happier') people's eyes. But it genuinely doesn't have to be that way. It just takes a lot of hard work, acceptance and looking the truth (and the ex) square in the eye.
Certainly, I think huge break ups can - definitely - destroy you if you let them. They make you question every part of your identity, your friendship groups, your work and your relationships. If you let it, every single one of these aspects can be eroded, if not destroyed, by your loss. However by the same token, such a catastrophic event in your life can improve it; it can force you into empowerment: 'taking back' your life and re-defining it; essentially re-building it from the ground up in the way you've always wanted. If you manipulate your raw emotion into willful determination you can be a better person than before. You can make what was only ever a fleeting fantasy in your head into a tangible reality.
In the same way, you can easily end up hating your ex. It's natural and so incredibly easy. But as the saying goes, forgiveness is not about the other person, it's about you: it's about you finding your own peace. If you ever get the chance - as hard as you think it might be - meet up with that person who meant so much to you once and seek out your resolution. Look them in the eye and forgive them. And more importantly, be happy for them.
Because whether you realise it or not at the time, they'll have been going though the very same seven processes, too; you just never considered it.
And then you'll realise that you've both have let the past go. And then you'll smile.
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