My Breakup, My Body, Everything Hurts

I’m learning that heartbreak and gratitude can live in the same body.

I’m Alexander Cheves, and this is LOVE, BEASTLY—a blog about sex, feelings, and manhood. It’s written mostly for men—gay, straight, bi, MSM, or just curious—but some readers are women, and some don’t fit into categories. Everyone’s welcome here. 

This is one of my more personal essays. Heads up: these can sometimes include explicit content or emotionally triggering subjects.

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I am so sad. I'm just moving through my house, brushing my teeth, living on autopilot, and trying to forget that the world outside is filled with people.

To keep my mind from pitching too far into the dark, I've been focusing on my body and protecting my heart, encasing it in a thick shield of muscle. Since my breakup, I've been going to the gym almost every day. I added an extra day to my training week and another set to every lift. I'm consuming so much protein powder that I don’t even notice how gross it tastes anymore. I’m swelling.

The word "heartbroken" feels very right. I've been questioning everything I thought about the relationship I was in. As I write this, I'm on vacation in Florida with my family, and I keep wandering away from them to walk alone along the beach. Teenagers on vacation and happy couples holding hands pass by. Words like "morose” and “shattered" sound dramatic, but here on the edge of the sea, they feel true.

If there’s anything I miss most about him, it’s having a second set of eyes on the world, a different set of thoughts to compare mine to. My ex was more perceptive than I in almost every way. Where I see cynicism and dark portents, he saw the world just as it is—kids playing in the surf, handsome men walking by. He did not project his glum thoughts onto everything. He was aware of his inner self and where it ended, where the feelings stopped and the world began, and was remarkably skilled at just seeing the world, letting it be as it is, and finding delight in it, even when he was sad.