My Mother and My Father's Heartbreak

When we broke up, my mom told me it would take about a year for me to be okay again.

She said it took her a year

To recover

When her heart broke.

I asked my father the same,

My father told me that it might last forever.

He had a fiancé once,

Before my mom

He says says it still hurts sometimes

To think about the heartbreak

Of how they ended.

When we first broke up,

I was afraid

My mother would be right-

That I wouldn't be okay

For at least a year-

But, in the depths of me,

From a place I couldn't even speak,

A part of my quivered,

Terrified

That my father might be right.

I feared that

Perhaps my heart would never heal.

It's been a year and a half now,

I've spent more of college without you

Than I have with you

And I've started to realize that somehow,

Both of my parents were correct.

It did not just take me a year to get over you,

It took me a year

To accept the reality of an unplanned future.

I'm not mourning you

Anymore.

I did my year of time.

My heart broke for the lost of you

For a year and a half.

She rarely rebreaks

For you.

My mother was right.

Yet,

In a tragic way,

My father was also correct.

My heart still aches,

And occasionally breaks,

Mourning the unplanned future

That has become my new reality.

I don't know

If I will ever marry.

I don't know

Where I will work.

I don't know

Where I will live.

We would have figured that out.

Now I have to.

I don't mourn you.

I'm okay now.

I like who I am.

I like the reality I've grown into

Without you.

But my heart still fears and mourns

The loss of the stability

You brought.

When I was a we,

And we made the future.

I don't enjoy uncertainty,

But at least

My heart

No longer weeps for you.

12/13/23