Heartbreaks: A Painful Experience
Heartbreaks are painful. Everyone will have to endure one in their lifetime. The concept of two people who couldn't go a day without seeing one other spending the majority of the day watching each other on social media with no intention of starting a conversation—me included—wasn't one I wanted to take any longer. I couldn't articulate how I felt after losing my first (alleged) boyfriend until I read Charlotte's Wallpaper. Unlike Charlotte, who was suffering from nervous sadness (Payne, 2017), I was imprisoned by loneliness, grief, and, most importantly, fury. Writing this exploratory essay is my undying urge to strongly relate Charlotte's daily battles with her depression with my scathing heartbreak.
A Wave-like Relationship
Turning 21 was a remarkable milestone in college my life. I just got my driving license, and I owned the next Ryan Gosling in my life- my boyfriend, Jake. Just like Charlotte's endless suspicion on the big mansion, I had my qualms too on this drop-dead gorgeous. You see, Charlotte always felt an intense feeling of a haunted house she was living in, but the beauty surrounding the mansion, its meticulously trimmed hedges and old greenhouses still swept a sense of calm on her fears. My relationship with Jake was more like a wave. One minute I am casting doubts in his every move and the next it's all calm. The cycle of intertwined foolish hearts ill call it.
The Odd Relationship
After a few failed therapy sessions, I was transferred to my hometown in Havana to fully heal. I write about Jake. I write about how I miss him. I write about us eloping to Alaska far away from everyone else not considering that we cannot eat snow. The Charlottes secretly writes about her hate for the bizarre yellow wallpaper, and I wonder what she would say about our odd looking family cat (forget Garfield, he's harmless) that incessantly meows in a high pitched squeaks and intentionally steps on the television wires switching it off in the process. It then walks away proudly as if to say "sorry about that, I've walked way too far to come and correct that". I think the cat would scare her even more. This cat however, has remained to be my solipsistic companion. Always, coiling up my lap when I write about my unachievable fantasies with my run away man, this cat gives me insight on how to be a free spirit. No attachments. The look on this cat's face anytime I scribble down the words 'love and hurt' seems to be something like this- "see, I have no one to look after. I live for me. Look at how fat I am you broken-hearted human. Is your heart bleeding? I use mine to give myself new breath. Funny, attached mortals". But only Charlotte and I can understand why we write. We write to express ourselves in white and black. The only place we can speak out without being told what is right and bad for our recovery.
Denial of Lost Love
All this while, am in agonizing pain, mood shifting, and shattered self-esteem, I forever deny the thought of me without a lover- Jake. I am forever holding cloud fantasies of him and I meeting at a random coffee shop, accompanied by his new lover. Jake then goes ahead to ask me out again. Anyone would call it denial. Denial at its best I am in denial about my lost love. In parallel, Charlotte is in denial too, about her mental health. We are both victims of unreciprocated love I'd say.
Work Cited
Payne, S. (2017). Monstrous Maladies”: Oppression, Transgression, and Degeneration in the Picture of Dorian Gray and “The Yellow Wallpaper.
