Just Get Over It!

I'm a hopeless friend to have around if you've just broken up with someone. I can never find the right balance between being the sympathetic "awww, you poor thing" shoulder to lean on and the short and straight friend that tells it as it is - "pick yourself up and stop being so pathetic".

I do genuinely feel for people who have had their hearts broken. I know what it feels like. It's horrible. Like falling down a black hole and not knowing where you will land. Yes, the 'mourning' period is not nice, with its accompanying thoughts of suicide, lack of will to eat (hang on...that's a good thing, no?) and loss of of motivation to live. Yet, its a necessary step to take in order to get back on our two feet again.

But it's also so horribly annoying. OK, I'm not the most sympathetic person, but really. I mean, especially if we have been hurt before, and we have, why do we simply set ourselves up again? Have we not learned from previous episodes that it hurts and reliving every little detail of what happened over and over again just ain't going to change anything?

Of course, its easier said then done. I'm not the one who's heart is in pieces right now. I have been extremely fortunate to have around me a network of people who have been my safety net at times like these, and their efforts are immensely appreciated. There are some people who are better at cooing and coaxing and others at being blunt. The most effective advice I have ever had after a devastating breakup many years ago was "Just Get Over It".

It was said with a tinge of exasperation and it was exactly what I needed to hear. It woke me up with a jolt. You know, sometimes when you are in shock, all you need is for someone to give you an order? It's that - I needed a direction. Enough talking, enough analysing, enough wondering, enough plotting. This deal is done.

I guess the crux of the matter is this: how long exactly is an appropriate public mourning period? Of course, that depends on the person, the relationship, the time in life...no, you can't say 2 weeks or 2 months or whatever. What I mean is that a part of you will indeed mourn for a long time, however much the relationship meant to you, but you can mourn inside.

When you've exhausted the details and there are no more twists to the plot, enough! I am guilty of long drawn out post break up public mourning and it need not have been so. It was indulgent of me to have carried on doing that to myself. One needs to move on from the frantic need to relive and enter the phase of quiet reflection.

The key to turn that locked door of awakening? It's perspective. Once you put that huge relationship in the long and vast life you have lived and will go on to lead, and then put your life within the context of the world around you, and then put your world into the context of the universe at large, you kind of get the message. The relationship moulded who you are going to be, but it so is not your life!

I don't like seeing weak people. When I see refugees, people abused in their childhood, those living in poverty, and I see survival in their eyes, I think everyone is capable of strength, of great strength. They just don't know it.