Five things I learned from falling in and out of love during the time of quarantine
If the last fourteenth months were to be summarized into a movie plot line, it would go something like this -
Boy meets girl at work six years ago. They are the best of friends, never more. Boy is into working out and personal development, girl has a plethora of hobbies and helps run an improv theatre. Girl breaks up with boyfriend, boy divorces wife. March 2020-the pandemic hits. Boy and girl get together, and beauty ensues. They explore, learn, love, have an amazing time just the two of them (and occasionally his amazing young daughters) while the world around them seemingly burns to a crisp. Boy and daughters move into girl’s beautifully decorated and perfectly sized for one person townhouse. Boy and girl simultaneously go through an identity shifting program where they learn that everything they thought to be true was just something they learned and are able to release the shit that is no longer serving them and replace that shit with lovely flowers. Boy tells girl he wants to be alone. Girl leaves and travels in a van, realizes she wants to travel full time. Girl comes home. Boy moves out. Boy marries someone else.
WHAT?! Hard stop, what, he got married to someone else immediately? No one saw that coming, right, it's not just me? Yes- this the story of how I, girl, fell in and out of love during the 2020-2021 pandemic. As boy and I are no longer together for very obvious reasons and to avoid awkward grammatical issues, I will refer to boy from here on out as my Partner At The Time, or Patt for short. Also, hi, my name's Jamie.
Though this story is incredibly nuanced and complex and difficult to pare down, it’s worth noting that 1 this is only my side of the story and 2, a pivotal moment in this story, Patt marrying someone else, happened about a week ago. I imagine I’ll be revisiting many lessons about this for years to come, but for now, I will tell my tale exactly where I’m at and what I’ve learned so far to the best of my ability. Please also note that society will generally tell you that I am the victim in this story and Patt is the villain. I hate spoilers, but I choose to spoil it for you now and say that with every piece of my heart I do not believe that either is true.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
5. I leave when I want to leave
When Patt told me he wanted to be alone at the end of March 2021, within days I was packed and on my way to to pick up my parents’ camper van and live in that for awhile. I recognized that I wanted to live a life on the road, with people who love me. I’m meant to explore and travel and by accepting and loving this part of me, in the midst of so much hurt and pain, I was able to heal and realize where I’m meant to be. I lived in the van for six weeks this spring, exploring every new thing I could and feeling every old thing that comes up during your quintessential break up in your 30s situation.
Two weeks ago when we were standing in my kitchen and Patt told me he was marrying someone else, I felt myself leave my body and stare down at us like it was a scene in a movie. What the hell did he just say? He's getting married? I floated back down into my body. As he was telling me the details about this person and what he was planning to do, I sank onto the crumb covered floor and burst into tears. I grieved, he sat near me and held space for my grief. When my crying subsided, what came through for me was the loudest resounding truth that I’ve ever known - I love myself. I trust the universe. This was a gift. I stood up, smiled, said thank you, and left my own house without a care to ever see him again.
I leave when I want to leave. I listen to my body and heart and when I realize that a situation is no longer serving me, I get the hell out of Dodge and trust that the universe has something else in store for me.
4. I accept the reality of the situation
Whenever I would get into a tailspin about something growing up, lost in my own emotions and story about what I thought was happening, my mom used to gently bring me back to earth with a simple notion- stating the reality of the situation. “The reality of the situation is that you have enough time to do one after school activity, not eight. Let me help you pick one.” she would say lovingly when I wanted to swim, dance, go to art classes and be on the jump rope team all at the same time. “The reality of the situation, Jamie, is that you need to eat your vegetables if you want to have ice cream later.” This is a fun one because allegedly my retort back to my mom was that I had two stomachs, one for healthy food and one for dessert and for some magical reason my healthy stomach was always full. There's a joke in here about being a cow but that is not the point of this story and unfortunately calling a woman a cow is still an insult in our society today even though that's bullshit and cows are some of the cutest creatures alive so I digress.
The reality of the situation is, Patt fell in love with someone else. Patt told me he wanted to be alone, and now two months later is married to someone else. Does that timeline feel shady as shit? Yes. Is it the reality of the situation? Also, yes.
Another reality of this situation is, I am no longer in love with a man who is tied to one location. I am free to sell my house, quit my day job, and explore the country in a van for as long as I want if I want to. THAT reality makes my heart leap with joy and fall into presence with myself. I feel clear, excited, and in love with the opportunities that are possible for me now. I choose to focus my attention on that reality.
By accepting the reality of any situation I find myself in, I can feel through what's there and clear the way for something new to emerge. I’ve learned that the sooner I accept every single part of the situation, the easier it becomes to feel my feelings about it and move through it. Speaking of…
3. I feel my feelings the moment I feel my feelings
This was something a beloved improv teacher of mine used to passionately/violently yell at us to drill in the importance of emotions in characters we play onstage. Turns out it’s also some very solid life advice that’s backed by both science and personal experience. Our emotions are meant to be felt, expressed, and moved through completely. If not, they get stuck and repressed and show up in our worlds as feeling stuck in a situation that you know doesn’t serve you at best, and as feelings of self hatred, despair and a dark swirling pit of destruction at worst.
I am so proud to say that I felt all of my feelings as I was falling in and out of love this year. I felt disgust and humiliation when I thought about how Patt "must" have been in love with this other woman when we were together. I thought about that, listened to the sensations in my body that came up, and threw up into a trash can while a group of supportive individuals held space for me. When I thought about all of the people in our community that were so delighted when Patt and I got together seeing his marriage announcement on Instagram, I expressed my rage by screaming into a pillow and punching the shit out of my mattress. When I thought about how lonely I felt in this circumstance where no one quite understands what I’m going through, I sobbed openly on a crowded beach in Lake Tahoe. My best friend held me quietly and carefully for that one.
All emotions deserve to be felt. Winding the tape back to Spring of 2020, I remember how I felt anticipation, excitement, and shy the first time I realized Patt was something more than a friend. I felt overwhelming joy and love through my entire body when we said I love you for the first time under fireworks last fourth of July. I felt blissful peace when he first moved in and we would sit together for hours reading our favorite books and sharing lines out loud that spoke to our hearts first. I felt tenderness and an awe inspiring sense of importance when I would paint and draw with his daughters, a feeling that I never knew existed until I found myself in the role of step mom. Though our love escalated and extinguished quickly, we were in love just the same.
I got to feel the entire range of human emotions this year. Fully expressed, fully intense, and fully mine. Our society labels emotions as good and bad, positive and negative, high energy and low energy. Emotions are just the labels we slapped on sensations in the body and told everyone to avoid the ones that are uncomfortable or to be frank, make you feel like shit. It’s so much more satisfying to feel every single emotion all the way through, and know that it’s all part of being a human alive in this world.
2. I practice gratitude for everything
This one is short because I’m still learning how to do it. It’s really easy for me to say “thank you” when Patt is driving me all around the beautiful state of Nevada, listening to our favorite podcasts and music and staying six feet away from everyone else, while stopping occasionally on the side of the road to make delicious food or bone. We were in love! It was all roses.
It’s way more difficult for me to say “thank you” when I saw his Instagram post announcing his marriage, telling the whole world (realistically, his 600ish followers) how he fell in love with her the moment he saw her. This felt like fucking shit but the reality of the situation is, it happened. If I say thank you, I get my power back. If I say yes, thank you for this gift, I get to feel relieved knowing that my future husband is out there somewhere and wasn’t where I thought he was. If I say yes, thank you, this is happening for me, I get to breathe easy knowing that one day I will have the capacity to be happy for Patt, and happy for love, even though today and probably tomorrow and the next day or week or month or even your year are not those days. Cue the Friends theme song.
There’s a warm up exercise we do in improv called Rose Bud Thorn where we share one thing that’s going well, our rose, one thing that we are looking forward to, a bud, and one thing that’s a thorn in our side. It’s a way to connect with each other and know how we are feeling in the world as both humans and performers. It’s a practice to express gratitude for the thorns and view every single thing in life as a gift to say thank you for. I’m practicing, I'm learning. Thank you.
1. It’s my story
When I was little, I used to spend hours in my room reading and writing stories- long ones. I would craft and create elaborate characters and intricate worlds in which they lived, and I would let my imagination run wild. I shared these stories with my parents, my friends, my classmates. If I was reading a good book, you couldn’t pry me away from it if your life depended on it. I remember when the fifth Harry Potter book came out, it happened to fall on a weekend that my mom took me to Chicago to explore and see a new place. We spent all of day one sitting in the hotel room so I could finish the book. The scene looked something like- ten year old me, reading and sobbing in a corner when Hedwig and Dumbledore died (sorry, spoiler though it has been a minute) and Mom- quiet, loving, patiently waiting for me to recover from the emotional turmoil my distraught preteen hormonal self needed to experience at that exact moment. Thanks Mom, love you.
Somewhere along the way, my light started to dim. It wasn’t cool to be creative and write long stories. I stopped reading, and started watching tv because that’s what everyone else did. My belief was confirmed when David S* came up to me drunk after prom and yelled in my face about how in second grade I wrote such long stories and how boring they were. I never stopped to question why he was coming up to me in the first place, or why he even remembered something from fifteen years prior.
In college, my friend’s mom used to tell us “It’s your movie”. We get to do what we want with our lives, we get to choose who we cast as the best friend, the villain, the heroine, the love interest. We also choose the setting and where the story unfolds. I remember thinking it felt selfish to adopt such a mindset – who am I to be the star of the show? Her words stuck in my head, and would float up anytime I listened to my heart and made a choice that felt dramatic yet fully aligned.
Now, one of my mentors tells me all the time that we are the writers, the directors, and the stars of our own movies and this year, falling in and out of love, it finally clicked. I think it took so long because I was so used to reading and the movie metaphor didn’t translate, but ultimately it’s all just different methods of the same kind of storytelling.
This is MY story. I choose to cast people in roles that align with my purpose and my heart and that means- I choose who plays what role and for how long. I’ve released the limiting belief that it is selfish to be in the spotlight, and replaced it with a genuine love for myself and truth that I’m worthy of expressing myself and my story.
I am not the victim, and Patt is not the villain in my story. He’s a man who fell in love with me, and then fell in love with someone else. In taking action on this, he has forfeited all rights to my heart and to be a main character in my story, so he could be the main character in his. He was an actor who played a beautiful complex layered role during a very important part of the story, where I was experimenting with who I am and realizing that I am meant for so much more. In loving him with my full heart, I cast him in a role he was not a perfect fit for – no matter how many amazing conversations, adventures, and orgasms we shared together. Stories can be beautiful or they can be deadly depending on your perspective, how you choose to tell it, and ultimately, how you treat yourself as the main character. I’ve thanked Patt for his services and kicked him the fuck off my stage.
Now, I open a new chapter- one of exploring and fully expressing myself and showing up with love for the world. I choose to view falling in and out of love during a quarantine as an important part of my story, a character changing lesson that was crucial for my character to show up in all of her delicious, beautiful, badassery, and yet it is NOT the main plot line people will remember when they leave the theatre, when they put down the book, when the curtain falls. I am the true love of my life, and I’ll find a partner who honors that. I look towards the future with excitement and awe for who I'll be and what I'll see. I lovingly remind myself that if I thought the last year was any indication of how amazing and beautiful my life is going to be, I better buckle up and cancel any plans I have aside from living this story because it’s about to get wild. Thank you.
*No hard feelings dude, high school was hard and I always thought you were cute.
Jamie Clark is a writer, artist, and improviser exploring the United States in a van. She’d love to connect on Instagram @sunflower.vigilante or on Clubhouse @jamiemcjmc. For more information on the identity shifting program where you learn that everything you thought to be true was just something you learned and you’d like to release the shit that is no longer serving you and replace that shit with lovely flowers, visit trainingcampforthesoul.com. If you think you are good fit for the role of Partner in her movie and would like to audition, send all inquiries and headshots to sunflower.vigilante@gmail.com with the Hamilton reference(s) in this blogpost as the subject line.
