I lost the love of my life. It was my first adult romantic relationship – it was crushing, humbling, illuminating, thrilling. Frankly, I don’t know how people can choose to go through this more than once. He’s a person I admired, respected, really liked who I loved and who loved me. And then it was over.

Well, it wasn’t as sudden as that, as anyone who knows me can attest. I get attached to people and things long after their expiration date. It’s still hard to get accustomed to say things in past tense.

I held on not wanting to let go, held on hoping that a solution would emerge that would bring us back together. Each of us was at an impasse, unwilling to move forward and make a move that would make us vulnerable. Neither of us was totally right, nor totally wrong which makes the ending all the more sad.

It was my first true heartbreak and in the first four weeks of grieving, I opened my heart to the pain and to the sadness. The first thought of every morning was the realization that it was over. And the second thought was to stay in bed and pull the covers over my head. I cried during reality shows, I cried every day during yoga, feeling my heart pound with such ferocity that I could barely lay with my chest on the floor.

I’m glad to have loved with such intensity, with intention and trust, and above all with tenderness. After my relationship with the narcissist, one would have thought I would be cynical and jaded. I had reason to be but I wasn’t. I was vulnerable to someone for whom I cared deeply, sharing deep secrets, deep insecurities, scared at first for not being loved as a deeply flawed human. When I was loved, I was deeply grateful for our time together and awed that I could finally experience this deep connection. I was in love until my love was rejected and given back, like a letter returned in the mail and unopened. How could my love be rejected? It was unfathomable to me and still is.

I suppose I had something to do with that. Maybe, I didn’t adequately play the game of being hard to get. I just gave him my heart and trusted that he take care of it. I thought he was worthy but he gave up on us. Time is our most valuable resource and I suppose he didn’t think I was worth the wait. That’s a challenge that I’m willing to take and prove him wrong by realizing my exalted self and living my best life and have that be a testament to who I am.

In the aftermath, I felt emotion creep slowly over me like a heavy blanket or explode within me, like a soda pop that has been shaken too many times before being opened. One morning during one of my meditation sits, I felt sadness and then an outburst of joy upon remembering our shared experience on the magic carpet ride. Love enveloped me, embraced me, made me feel connected to the Divine and to all those who had loved before and who had felt the pain of heartbreak.

I’ve moved past the acute stage of short outbursts of emotion and into the weight of sadness that laid stubbornly on my chest. I understand the emotion of heartbreak so much more deeply now. As I lingered too long over some sappy love song and when I could feel my sadness turn to some kind of mawkish indulgence, I would check myself and regain my bearing. I am not unique and not terribly that special. I had loved, I had lost and I am still here. I still have to work, go through the motions of life but now I have been made more tender, made more open, and finally more connected to people with whom I had always had a bit disdain and distrust for their feelings, feelings which I had deemed too sentimental and entirely not rational. Now ironically, I was finally one of them.