I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

There's a time after a relationship ends when you probably catch yourself thinking, what happened?

You might find yourself retracing your steps, trying to figure out where you got lost along the way.

You might ask yourself,

was the time I spent with that person real?

Was any of that real?

Or at least some of it?

There's a distinct disenchantment

when the spell of the relationship has broken

and the magic's gone. You're not seeing the world through

love's rosy lens anymore. You wonder about what you might have overlooked or misinterpreted or just

got wrong. I mean, I've been there. Most of us have been there more than once. It can take a lot of time and a lot of work and maybe some therapy to get to a place of acceptance, let alone contentment after an important relationship ends. It can take even longer to get to a place of gratitude,

to be able to parse how or why it ended from what it was,

to be able to separate the end of the story from the story as a whole,

to be grateful for what the relationship gave you

and taught you. It makes me think of the opening line of the Jack Gilbert poem, failing and flying.

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

Even when a relationship ends before we're ready, even when it hurts, I think there's something to celebrate in it.

Maybe lots of things to celebrate.

One of those things we can celebrate is the flying that occurred before we fell.

Today's poem captures that blend of feelings after a relationship ends. The balance of sadness,

rye humor, and gratitude, despite it all, is incredibly moving.

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