September 18, 2014

Breakup Defined. ~ Nora Meiners {Poem}

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A friend of mine was going through the kind of breakup where you know you don’t want to end things but you also know that particular person is not good for you.

Instead of connecting there was obsessing. Instead of direct communication there was only hints of what her partner was feeling. As we were discussing it she says, “I finally get it, there is a difference between longing and loving.”

When she said that I knew she had touched on what many of us have as a stumbling block to healthy partnerships. We long for an idea of what it could become. We long for people that repeat patterns that make us feel comfortable but some of those patterns are unhealthy.

From that simple insight I sought to write about what it is to “breakup.” We put such weight on the dissolution of our romantic breakups but there are other people that we invest in and ultimately need to divest from. I came to the conclusion that “breaking up” is a necessary and painful central part of our human experience.

We will have multiple breakups, they will shape us, take us from one state of being to another. Every time we lose someone we think for a while that, that particular person cannot be replaced in our hearts but eventually they are, so this poem is about that cycle. I was on the 2014 Lizard Lounge National Poetry Slam team and I performed this at a regional slam at Urbana, in New York City.