Breakups suck. This is a universal fact in life that everyone accepts; unless you hated your partner. Unfortunately (fortunately?) for me, I did not. Like everyone else, I went through the seven stages of grief immediately after the breakup. Now that I’m finally at acceptance, I think now is a perfect time to put my thoughts onto my bright white MacBook screen.
These past four months have been paradoxically the longest and shortest months of my life. Getting broken up on my 21st birthday felt like the cruelest joke ever. Not to quote Depeche Mode but maybe God does have a sick sense of humor after all. October, which began a couple of days after my birthday didn’t feel real. I was stuck in an endless cycle of wake & baking, running, walking past her house, and trying not to hate myself.
To distract myself from the breakup, I got really into Roman history, but not in a weird fascist way. I ended up seeing my Roman imperialism class as an escape from my endless thoughts of her. Doing this improved my mental health greatly. Studying Roman history may have changed my life by changing my perspective on my existence. It’s an obvious truth that the Romans (and the Greeks) laid the groundwork for much of what we consider Western Civilization. While reading the Twelve Caesars, I realized that historical figures from the past, including the Founding Fathers were all well-versed on Roman statesmen, generals, and thinkers, and that I was still learning about them in the year of our lord 2024. Suddenly, all the feelings in my head seemed insignificant. To put it bluntly, I realized that I am really nothing. In 200 years, who is going to remember me? While this does sound like a nihilist perspective, I truly found comfort in the fact that I am insignificant. Yes, my breakup sucked but in the grand scheme of things, it will not be remembered like Caesar’s conquest of Gaul or Constantine moving the empire’s capital to Constantinople. And in that I found solace.
Song Link: Blasphemous Rumors