Truly Becoming Apathetic To The One You Loved

How Can You In Autumn?

During some stagnant summer, a deep, passionate first love holds you tightly with an arresting assortment of grace, and warmth, and tranquility, and repose—and all these other undeniably pacifying things you only wish your weary heart could have access to on its lonesome. At the same time, it is such an overwhelmingly special, exclusive feeling borne from the work of two in which you have no choice but to applaud for its companionate nature. First love is a private thing, but not so private as to keep it unknown, in solitude, sheathed behind the scabbard of your soul when it is meant to be wielded by two.

Then, first heartbreak and betrayal sets you free as swiftly as first love swept you up. You do a strange, philosophical kind of grieving for months—for yourself, for your beloved, for the two, for one—and pursue new, faltering loves that reflect bestial versions of yourself that are far less naive, familiar, sweet, or privileged. You can’t complain because you knew what you were risking from the start. You can’t complain because you were well-aware of the illusionary innocence marked by first love, but God, do you complain.

During autumn, you enter a taiga characterized by dissociated thoughts, muted colors, and silent snowfalls. There are angular glaciers that have harrowing edges immersed in varying hues of poignant, hypnotizing blues that fail to mirror you in their monumental shades. You stand before the azure foot of the mountain side and reminisce on the fire of old habits that passed before the season.

Again, you suppose there are all sorts of reasons to hate her.

You consider her deceitfulness again, you consider her pride again, you consider her passivity, her complacency again, and then you consider the years of pain that have paralyzed her like so. You consider the way she would stare at her fidgeting lap when she would sob. You consider the way she would softly smile at you with a snotty nose and bloodshot eyes despite finding the way you would crack jokes at the trough of vulnerability distasteful. You consider the way she sobbed in your arms for that first and final time, and she was still so pretty then. You consider the way she gazed at you for a final time with such longing, sorrow, and solicitude. You consider the way she liked you so sincerely but could just not love you no matter how good you were.

You consider the source of her suffering and its callous offspring bridled to her—etched into the surface of her olive skin—and a special, exclusive sympathy and sadness for her still overcomes you despite everything. Only this time, you enjoy it in metered privacy. It is best appreciated as one—and it is best etched into yours—as hushed clarity for your forgiving heart and reprieve for your nebulous mind. For once, it is a recognizable version of you, and nothing about the seasons matter anymore.

---

I don’t believe I could ever become truly apathetic to a past lover. There will always be a sad, mellow echo that reverberates through me at the prolonged thought. I know apathy as a state far removed from the vehement temperament of both love and hate, promising an indifference for the other that many root themselves in after relational departure. Perhaps I missed the memo. Is it easy for others to unattach themselves—not from their past lovers—but from the intimacy of knowing the suffering their lovers endured and continue to endure for love so closely?

Of course, knowing the role that suffering plays has minimal responsibility in neither relieving nor excusing the pain she caused me by careless action, but that does not mean I should have to roam this world with bitterness and resentment towards a soul that is just as confused. She is not so harmless. She is not so innocent. But, she is so human, and the closest measure to apathetic departure I can bestow upon myself is the simple acceptance of that.

And, of course, for the sake of my self-respect, I do not have to force myself to understand it. Our chapter has no clean-cut conclusion, no lucid fact, and no palpable intention. With all that mud and confusion bears no real ability or chance to understand it to begin with. That is more than okay. If the world revolved around how much we understood about people, we would all be apathetic in autumn. We would all remain idle by the mountain side. We would all regret a summer that was beautifully, tragically human.