#2 Starting the year with a broken heart

I met and fell in love with my boyfriend instantly in 2019. (For the sake of this essay let's call him Matt).

Our first year together was a wild ride for each of us as individuals. But together there was a space of calm, gentleness, and safety. He's the founder of a growing startup and spent much of the year travelling internationally. I was melting at my corporate job, which resulted in a resignation halfway through the year. The months (and years) that followed were turbulent for me emotionally - I had know idea what I was doing just that I was stepping into the creative unknown.

There were things about the relationship that intrigued me like no other I'd ever experienced. It took us five dates to have our first kiss. Another six months to sleep together for the first time. I wasn't used to things starting this way. It was enchanting. I savoured it.

By early 2020 we had grown close, and when the pandemic broke out and we entered a state of national lockdown, I knew that I wanted to be locked down with him. We moved into his parents house in the suburbs with his sibling and partner (his parents were not there), and I counted my blessings everyday of those hard and confusing times as I had the privilege of a garden to walk around in and people to talk to.

Things were hard for him at work during that time, and I was exposed to all of it living with him. The walls started coming up for the first time then, but I had the compassion to see this as a layer of stress and overwhelm. I was dealing with my own stuff anyway.

Now that we had tested things out for the few weeks in that house, and our movements outside were still limited, I spent the next 3 months living in my houseshare from Monday - Thursday, and then I'd stay with him for a long weekend. It was fun - we played games, cooked food together, and spent a lot of time cuddling through winter in his tiny flat. I had only been in my house-share for two months before the pandemic hit, and I had never lived fully with a boyfriend before and I was desperate to try it out. So I moved across to his tiny flat, with the intention that we would find a bigger place to share in the next month or two. I joke that I just elbowed my way in.

That house hunt ended up taking almost a year, and in that time I felt some resentment grow up to being stuck inside a flat all day with construction happening in four neighbouring properties. I didn't find much company in the work I was doing - strained as I tried to provide spaces to hold groups of leaders navigate extremely challenging times. I was lonely, he was stressed. I focused on the small things, journalling, practicing gratitude and trying to do yoga every day. Things were hard, but there was safety in our relationship. And I figured my worldview was shaped by the misery I was experiencing inside as I recovered from burnout.

By mid 2021 we had moved into a bigger space, with big energy, where I find myself sitting right now. It has a bold and colourful aesthetic. One that has only been possible through the two of us being together. I love being in the energy of this physical space inside - it fills me with awe and love and appreciation and gratitude. Yet I also struggle with its location in an anxious corner of the city where the sounds from the street below wake me from sleep with overwhelming sounds of homeless people often crying for help.

Over the last few months of the year, Matt's stress levels have reached unsustainable levels, and I'm starting to see the light after a three year depression. It feels as if we're in different points in space and time, and I'm longing to connect through our relationship and level it up, while he's doing everything he can do to survive which includes putting walls up everywhere. By the end of last year there was a bit of a breaking point, so in early January we made the decision for me to move out for a few months to give the relationship some space to breathe. For me to focus on my stuff and for him to focus on his.

While the intention was for me to find a place to be for three months, the property market here is crazy in summer. So I'm staying with friends, 2 weeks here, 1 week there. It's nourishing in some ways, and novel living in different areas which brings a freshness to my life that was feeling a bit stagnant. Yet it's also all incredibly overwhelming. My body and mind are holding me through it all, but as soon as I check-in with my heart it feels incredible sadness and rawness. I'm trying to find spaces where I can cry as much as I need to without bottling it all in again.

I have no idea if this is an ending or a phase that will help us in the long run, all that I know is that sitting in the uncertainty of it all requires a lot of courage, kindness and love.