Sometimes, When People Leave, It Creates Growth

There is a Breakfast Club interview that really speaks to me and I enjoy referring back to.

Tyrese Gibson, an R&B singer turned actor, has had his fair share of controversies over the years. The man became a meme for crying about the court battles over his daughter, and he is reportedly facing legal trouble for his dogs’ allegedly killing his neighbor’s dog.

The craziness of such news made me reflect and jog my memory about the last time he had an interview on the radio show.

He returned to the Breakfast Club last year to show the audience he no longer had disdain for the hosts and was on the healing path.

Gibson made a remark that struck me and left me winded when I heard it, not because of how correct the statement was, but at the sentiments it sought to convey.

Tyrese Gibson critiqued our modern, heartbreak-healing culture as being complicit in people “hurting themselves.” In his view, the need to consistently check and reevaluate yourself, paired with questioning if you have met this subjective standard of being healed from a past breakup, can cause turmoil to those who seek to be in union with someone but who feel they can’t commit.

I appreciate the creative’s authenticity. His words were new and fresh to me, from a different perspective. As a man, I have never heard nor had a communal discussion of the failings of relationships. It’s always just go “back out there and try again.” The analysis is never too deep.

And I have seen people who desire to be in relation with someone, who are strapped by what they deem as their “own baggage.”

But, if I were to speak to and converse with Mr. Gibson, I would, in fact, add to his powerful statement that, sometimes, people leaving and those moments of isolation create growth.

Being Fully Alone

When you and I talk of being alone, I am not referring to the sentiments of receiving that message or text: “We need to talk.”

I am speaking to something more intangible. That cold place after the breakup, after the divorce, after the fun and joy ends, when you are just people who have shared experiences and memories.

Now, to give you all a bit of an identifier of myself. I am a Gen Z teenybopper by definition. Our culture pertaining to love is a tad different than most age groups. The advent of social media and dating apps means that you can be in a relationship with someone who is not directly linked to your personal upbringing or your neighborhood, which is more common today than in years before. Many argue that these new inventions have helped usher in more transactional relationships, not built on romance. Because of such revelations, it is easier when the relationship crumbles to just abandon all the vestiges of it; it’s more convenient.

What I am describing is something that is a rare luxury of our generation, to be able to engage in dialogue with someone you were infatuated with and they you, a few months or years ago, someone that you both believed in your heart would be “the one”, and then you’re here at the end of it all. I suppose that is truly when you are alone.

The moments when you check up on each other, wishing each other happy holidays, and that spark betrays you and makes you think maybe something is still there to be explored. It’s the loneliness of traveling to those destinations in solitude that you frequented together, but now you must reclaim as your own, as if you can’t hear the jokes in the halls and dining rooms where they were excavated.

The loneliness that me, you, and Tyrese are describing in spirit is so painful to hold on to, which is why so many of us as men will run to someone else. We will abandon the thought of engaging with the analysis alone, so we try to drop it where it is, or even bury it deep in our new partner’s heart—an unfair demand of them, where now they view themselves as the steward of our happiness.

The Parts Where We Diverge?

Tyrese Gibson palpably described the end of the road for so many. I just filled in the blanks of why.

The places where we diverge in thought, of being in isolation after the disastrous breakup occur are perhaps not even truly moments of divergence. To more aptly put it, Tyrese is looking at one path, and I am looking at the other.

I, too, have tasted heartbreak, and contrary to popular belief or dogmas, it doesn’t touch your palette any better, especially if it is a recurring theme. We may just find another way to hide it, but it is still there, it still sits in on every conversation, every late-night thinking session, every swipe on that dating app, and every meeting of an individual in a chance encounter where the jolt of intrigue taps your hand.

But it has been those same late-night thinking sessions, where I could have used something as an escape, where I truly questioned myself and sat at my own trial.

I replayed those moments in my mind when arguments should have been indicators. I pondered when lies were accepted as truth, when I knew that they were impractical fairytales. I pondered every instance in public that should have been a red flag, but I kept my shades on, unable to decipher the color.

This wasn’t an investigation of the other party to label them the cause of our demise. No, this was a conviction of myself and my part as the mastermind of my own personal failures.

It was something spiritually rebellious, even. In a world where we are told self-reflection and self-depreciation rhyme, I went against the grain and tapped into truths that existed all around me, but I was too immature to access.

I found myself healing every time the phone calls went unanswered. The text message conversations began to fizzle out and hung in the air. The conversations that we had when we did cross paths felt stale and performative. Souls playing the part of acquaintances but not actually being them. The smiles in public were attempts to hide from our joint histories together, and the reality that we did become characters in the prior seasons, no longer in the cast.

It taught me to abandon my perceptions of what was. The mythology of returning to a time when things were fresh and new was a fallacy, for Father Time only moves forward. There’s wisdom in that.

Our life journeys diverged, and if I ran headfirst into another relationship, I would still be hurt by these realizations. I would be traveling further and further down the spiral of life’s toilet bowl, fighting to swim out.

These truths came to the surface in moments that many would have run from, and they are the other side of the coin of Tyrese’s words; perhaps he knows but didn’t divulge on air.

I Recognize The Differences

I understand there are noticeable differences in age, but especially in relationship status.

Tyrese Gibson is a man who was married for some time, had a daughter, then, in his words, was randomly in a rocky spot. He was served divorce papers and had to fight for the custody of his daughter in situations that seemed to turn the intangible into the tangible.

He is a man trying his best to navigate a changing paradigm of the possibilities of love that deviates from the one he experiences.

I am a man who is a self-described Gen-Z teenbopper whose domicile is the ruins of what Tyrese thought was true. And in all transparency, what most of those men and women older than me thought was true.

I don’t want to be misunderstood. I don’t know the statistics, but I could imagine the result of Tyrese’s words. The reality of men and women who are so desperately in need of being loved again, being held again, being touched again, just sleeping next to someone in bed again, and that pain of angst causes them to do very harmful things.

I don’t want to run past and minimize the seriousness and the possibility of that real lived experience.

I am merely seeking to illustrate and elucidate the other side. The one that is often attempted to glamourize in films and skits on the internet, but is secretly a painful endeavor. And simultaneously, one that is necessary to bring about that healing.

To the one who finds comfort in the words and sentiments of Tyrese, the ones who see this as a lived reality, I assure you, I can feel that pain bleeding through the screen.

However, from my estimation and my experiences, what minimized such pain, even if it seemed pointless, was the camaraderie of others, able to dissipate that negative energy and give me moments apart from my reflections and thoughts.

What we need as humans is balance, not to abandon self-reflection for the consistent presence of other souls.

If I were to meet Tyrese Gibson, I would congratulate him on his achievements. He is a man who has turned love into wealth, fame, deals, sponsorships, and cultural conversations. And when things faltered and fell, he never gave up on such emotions.

I wouldn’t argue, I wouldn’t say he was wrong, just add on to the sentiments he previously uttered.

“Yes, you are so right that the painful isolation we feel can be crippling, even life-changing, in what we do to fix it at a surface level. But it is a necessary endeavor to heal, to grow, to be better for ourselves and the next person who comes along.”