Monday, December 21, 2009

this post brought to you by...

...tag, who posted, and once known as el tejon, who commented on tag's post today.
(not to mention my first husband, who contacted me this past weekend, after about 15 years.)

i'm supposed to be making fudge right now.

the question under discussion, at least in my head, is:
once heartbroken (or twice or 47 times), how do we move on in a way that serves us? how do we avoid the hardening of the heart into which we can fall so easily? what do we do with the hurt, anger, bitterness that we humans create so easily, and feel the need to justify? how do we let go of the pain, and let love in again?

It is sad not to love, but it is much sadder not to be able to love.
-Miguel de Unamuno

i could write reams about this. none of it would be new. so here's the reader's digest condensed version.

1. don't deny the hurt. don't hang onto it, either.
2. tell yourself the truth. don't let others tell you what you are, or should be, feeling.
3. know what part you contributed to the heartbreak. if you think you have no
part in it, think again.
4. resolve to do better the next time, for yourself and whoever you meet.
5. resolve that there will be a next time.
6. forgive the other person.
7. forgive yourself.
8. remember that you are healing. there will be very bad days, and not so bad days, and finally, good days.
9. resist the temptation to take on the role of victim.
10. finally, make no decisions based on the pain. those decisions, like "i'll never do this again", or "i'm not loveable" are pretty much always wrong.

i could write more of these pithy little comments. i might, later on.
there's so much more to this topic than can be addressed in one post.

we all have to make our own way through the muck and miasm of heartbreak.
this quote is the bottom line:

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer.
-Albert Camus



6 comments:

  1. The reathon the pithy little comments are pithy ith that they work. Generationth of folkth before uth pathed (bailiff, no more of thith nonthenthe) down what they knew until we ended up it with it, and found that their solutions work for us too.

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  2. I tend not to trust old guys with beards, especially around XMas, while visions of dancing bimbos in smoky bars are playing across my eyelids. It's just wrong.

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  3. tag-the solutions work, only if we use them, and that's where all this falls apart. as you said on your post, how do we do this when we can't get out of bed? well, hell, do it in bed!

    i think the bigger issue, one that i didn't directly address (aside from #10), is how do we keep the past from wrecking the present? i'm gonna think some more on that one.

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  4. Don't look back. Something might be be trying to catch up with you

    --Satchel Page

    (Easier said than done, Satch--KJ)

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  5. You seem to have more passion for these questions and answers than I can muster. Does this reflection have to do with your ex husband showing back up in your life? A friend came back into my life recently. This has brought a certain below the surface discontent with my life into view which in turn brought back the memories of Beverly and what might have been. I have to return focus to what is present and joyful in my life and turn from those wisps of smoke that are the what if's.

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  6. kirk-i love that quote! although, i think i'd want to know if something was gaining on me!

    tag-the passion for these questions has been lifelong, unrelated to husband the first.(we parted quite amicably, so reconnecting is not traumatic.) it's just the way i think. socrates said "the unexamined life is not worth living." the correlate is by hegel, "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." we ALL got history!

    you answered my last question beautifully-we stay present to what is here and now. and as kirk pointed out, easier said than done.

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