breakable

and we are so fragile
and our cracking bones make noise
we are just breakable, breakable, breakable
girls and boys
- ingrid michealson

my co-worker, a sweet young woman with the enviable combination of gleaming dark hair and piercing blue eyes, came to me yesterday to get advice about how to tactfully decline a suitor. the gentlemen in question works in our building and has recently become more aggressive in trying to woo her. she asked me if it was OK to just say that she just broke up with someone and wasn't really looking to start dating someone new. i looked at her quizzically and asked her whether she wanted to lie to him or whether she could just tell him that she is seeing somebody.

to which she replied:

'oh, it's totally not a lie. mike and i broke up this weekend.'

'what? what do you mean you and mike broke up this weekend? why didn't you tell me?'

'because it's not a big deal. i'm over it. it's not like we were together for very long or anything.'

i sat there, stunned and squirming, and just asked her if she was really OK. granted, she and mike hadn't been dating for more than a few months, but they had known each other for years and i knew how excited she had been in the beginning that they had finally owned up to mutual long-term crushes.

'nope. i'm totally fine. it's for the best. i deserve better, and he blew me off just one time too many.'

i hated to admit that i was inclined to agree with her, based on everything she had told me about him and his frequent plans-changing and general unattractive behavior.

but i marveled at her bounce-back. the social worker in me searched for a clue that she was minimizing her feelings or denying loss. he was, at very least, a good friend for a long time. but somehow i didn't get even a whiff of that from her. she seemed genuinely undamaged by the end of this relationship.

despite my firm belief that we are not designed to be knit up together with someone and then torn apart, whenever i see someone else handle heartache with grace and calm i feel a thick cocktail of marvel, envy, confusion and longing. remember that i cried for a week when my not-even-official-summer-fling imploded. we weren't dating, he was definitely not my boyfriend, and i had only known him a few months. how do people do it? how to they work through breakups without breaking?

i don't like to think of myself as particularly fragile. i never want anyone to think that i need to be handled with kid gloves, or that my emotional stability is dangling before them on one very taut, thin thread.

but i am breakable. and so far, i am glad that i am. one good thing about being a pisces is that you don't just get the depths - you also get the heights. a dizzying spectrum of emotional pinnacles and chasms. if that sounds bi-polar to you, then try living in a whole family of pisces! yikes. nature/nurture gone amok.

ah, but i know that pisces are not the only emotional fish in the sea. sometimes i think i would love people better and more authentically if i could remember that we are all just breakable breakable breakable girls and boys.