Weaving New Patterns: Breakups and How to Get Over Them

By Ridita Manzur

When you’re in a long-term relationship, it’s like you can see your entire life ahead of you in full fantastical detail—a tapestry embroidered with jewel-toned threads.

I could see myself one day with an emerald-cut diamond ring on my left hand, wearing a deep red sari and jewelry woven with sunshine. His initials would be hidden in my mehendi, but his familiar face would be right there in front of me in an embroidered sherwani, riding a white horse like we joked about.

We would have careers in the same city, a downpayment on a house that matched our prospective incomes, and two kids that I could imagine with my eyes and his nose. Every trip, birthday, and concert was dreamt up with him standing right next to me, holding my hand.

Then we broke up.

I saw it coming, of course. I ended the relationship due to a variety of reasons. But I wasn’t prepared for time to dilate.

It seemed like a year’s worth of memories blended and merged in the blink of an eye. His sister’s birthday shifted into our first date, which shifted into our first argument and the hundreds of subsequent fights.

And the future was vast, empty, and endless. The intricately embroidered threads of our tapestry unravelled and left behind a blank expanse of fabric before me.

Sure, I’d probably still have the wedding, kids, and career. But now they felt so suddenly strange and daunting. My groom was faceless. Would he be tall? Would he have an ugly laugh? Would his mother be a bitch? Would he be a mama’s boy?

I think the scariest part was reaching into the back cupboard of freedoms he took away from me. They were the things I wanted to do, but told myself were incompatible with my relationship. I had notions of teaching English in Bangladesh, but I told myself I would never leave him behind. This old book of songs and poems I wrote had started collecting dust after he snooped around and got upset about a retrospective poem I wrote years ago about a former love. I looked back on all the friendships I neglected and distanced myself from just because he didn’t like them.

When you end a relationship, the version of you that had to compromise and account for a separate half dies. You are left with only yourself and a new future ahead. That freedom is intoxicating. And it’s terrifying.

In the past, I think that that freedom felt like a challenge. When my previous relationship ended, I hopped on the dating apps after only a week. I had this blankness ahead of me, and I wanted to fill it, even if it led to a few rips in the fabric of my future.

But the temporary comfort the rebounds gave me never really took away the fear and uncertainty of the more distant future. They filled my stories and gossip with colour, and they took up the time I otherwise would’ve spent mourning the relationship and future I lost. But they never lasted in any substantial way.

Some of them were nice. Handsome, smart, funny, kind. But the fear of getting locked into another long-term relationship so soon always led me to pull back.

And then there would be the rebound I did like. He took me by surprise and swept me off my feet. And I would slowly start daydreaming intricate patterns of his face onto my tapestry. In my fantasies about the future, his figure would fill in that empty spot next to me.

But the reality always sets in eventually. Because the rebound is almost always just a figure to project everything you missed about your ex onto. And when the guy warming your bed fails to achieve the impossible feats presented in your dreams, you wind up in a situation where you have to mourn the fantasy as well as the breakup that led you into his arms.

So, how do you get over a breakup? I would suggest against getting into any situationships or making risky decisions to avoid the impending dread of an uncertain future. I’ve learned lessons from my past. This time around, I haven’t even entertained the thought of a dating app. I’m learning to meditate. To accept the stillness and the uncertainty of life. I’m learning to love the version of myself that thought up such a vivid and colourful future, but then letting her rest.

The important part of the tapestries I created was never the man next to me. The important part was the unchanging presence of myself. Through all the heartbreak and joy, the threads that made me have never broken or faded.