A conversation among the heartbroken under the mistletoe
There’s no good time to be heartbroken, but there’s no worse time to have your heart broken than at Christmastime.
“Not exactly,” says AAA. “There’s always the option of cancelling Christmas altogether.”
“Well, you can do that for yourself,” argues BBB. “But not when someone rings, and you get the door and there’s the entire Vienna Boys Choir singing ‘Sleigh Ride’ to you.”
“Come to think of it,” CCC ponders. “I don’t mind staying home all day in my pajamas while everyone else is hopping across town in dress shoes or high heels from party to party.”
“Plus,” says AAA, “I don’t have to use up my vacation leaves for a holiday date on the mountain or at the beach or trapped in some five star making like rabbits.”
BBB holds out a hand at the faces of AAA and CCC. “You forget that only one person can break your heart enough to turn you into a Grinch. What about those other people in your life who might have scoured the Cartier shelves for just the gift to make you happy? Must you cancel Christmas with them too?”
CCC, who seems to see the point in any argument, shrugs. “At the end of the day or when I’m alone, I’m a mess, but I must confess the season has never been busier now that I have time for everyone else, no longer clinging to the one person who brings the most joy to me—”
“—who,” interjects AAA, “as it happens, has the most power to take that joy away from you, not to mention everything else.”
CCC heaves a sigh as short, strong, and sudden as a gust of wind. “I can’t say you’re wrong.”
BBB’s eyes widen, nose crinkling at the scent of opportunity. “And that is why you are now opening up to the rest of the world, where you might find the next joy. A breakup is not the end of the world, sometimes it’s the beginning.”
AAA turns sharply to BBB. “Look who’s talking? Haven’t you just been handed the pink slip in the love department?”
“That’s why I’m here with you, but in a way I arranged to get the pink slip. Mine was a secret that I revealed, knowing full well—as I am a sucker for impossible relationships—that it would get me nothing.”
CCC rests her head on BBB’s shoulder. “Poor you, but you seem so put together.”
AAA eye-rolls at such a mawkish display of support. “But not before having spent a few days picking up the pieces like the carcasses of fallen leaves.”
BBB laughs. “I just needed a moment to lick my wounds, but now I see that I have no reason to be moping about losing something I never had anyway.”
Slumping on the rug on the floor, AAA harrumphs. “Easy for you to say because you only took your chances, and now you can move on.”
“What do you mean you can move on?” CCC asks. “You over it in a day?”
BBB settles in a spot on the rug. “The road ahead is tough, but I’ll be OK. I’ve learned I’m tougher, tough enough to handle it. I believe there is something sublime about unrequited love. It is some kind of exquisite torture.”
“You’re a masochist.”
I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes most people unhappy. If you only knew it, you are in luck not to have a heart.
L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Unsure whether it is AAA or CCC who has made such a declaration, BBB turns from one to the other. “On the contrary, I hurt less now that I know my love is pure and unconditional, that it does not need to be reciprocated. If I were to expect to be loved back, I might end up bitter.”
“And you’re not?” CCC asks.
“I’m working on it, taking refuge in W H Auden’s wise words: ‘If equal affection cannot be, / Let the more loving one be me.”
“Cut this crap,” AAA snaps. “You cannot be pining for what’s not even there forever.”
“My love is unconditional at the moment, I said. I didn’t say forever. Meanwhile, I feel freed from a love in which, before the revelation, I was caged. Now that I am no longer trying to see what might be in that cage for me, my house seems more welcoming, my other friends are more exciting, my days are tingling with possibilities, and my work—more than a pile of paper in which I could wish to lose myself—feels like a blank sheet on which I can rewrite my life.”
CCC cries, “It’s not the same for me. Mine has found another love.”
“Nor is it for me,” AAA snarls. “Mine has simply tired of me, got the best of me, and now only sees the worst in me.”
BBB sighs. “Expectations ruin everything. Expectation is the reason the most wonderful time of the year is the loneliest for many. The lights are bright yet you are in the dark. Everyone is giving love but there is no love going your way or at least that’s how you feel. Maybe that’s the reason for S.A.D., Seasonal Affective Disorder. Surely, it is the reason for the holiday blues. But the three of us, here gathered under the mistletoe, there is hope.”
AAA shakes her head. “No hope for me. I’m so done.”
CCC looks at AAA, uncertain whether to agree or disagree, then turns to BBB and cries, “I want hope. I need hope.”
BBB rises from the floor. “I spent the last two days of Christmas crying over spilled milk, thinking of what I had lost and at that time, before today, before I woke up this morning, it felt as though I lost everything. But love is sublime—it is for you as it is for me. What is sublime there is not what you have received or what to me has proved to be unrequited, never to be returned. What is sublime there, which only reveals itself when a relationship is stripped of all that is gained by mutual affection, when the relationship fails, when we are left full of love that isn’t wanted, is our unique and noble capacity for love, for giving of ourselves, for exposing our heart at the risk of having it broken.”
“To love and be loved,” CCC screeches. “I want both, equally.”
“If I love whether or not my love is returned, it is a love story,” says BBB calmly. “But if I receive love but do not value it, it’s not a love story, at least not mine.”
AAA slumps on the ground. “Whatever! You’re not going to make me sing ‘From now on, our troubles will be miles away,’ because that’s just BS.”
BBB nods. “Oh no one is exempt from trouble, not even those lucky in love. Only Snow White and her prince lived happily ever after but that’s only because the story ended with the kiss. Who knows if 10 days later she turned into either Meryl or Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her? Life is stranger than World War Z.”
CCC stretches on the rug, back flat on the ground, face directly beneath the mistletoe. “I think I’m going to fight to get my love back, but maybe I’m going to try to enjoy myself first until I start over in 2023? What about a round of whisky sour, on me?"
And the round of whisky sour is served in that quiet spot under the mistletoe. A kiss is not in the picture. No heart is on the mend, but no one dies and a New Year is up ahead.