What goes up must come down. In darkness there is light. It all
comes full circle. There are all these sayings and motivational sentiments for
moments when things aren't going well that help you remember things will always
get better. As with these sayings, there is a more specific one to breaking up
that the famous collective they say, "The best way to get
over someone is to get under someone new." That's a thing, right? I've
been through my fair share of breakups and explosive endings of "not quite relationships" and I've
bounced back from each one, granted with my baggage weighing a little more than
the last, but bounced back, I have. Just like every relationship was different,
so was the way I recovered from them. That is, until my mid-twenties. When I
was "younger" (I sound so pretentious, I'm sorry) I thought the best
way to handle moving on was to not dwell on it too long and jump right back in
to the scene. Meet a new person - It gives you something to do, you are no
longer sad, your phone is ringing again, it’s like you never skipped a beat, nothing
wrong with that, right? Wrong.
After many...MANY breakups and
"things" that ended I took the time to pull myself together. Reason
being, If you are constantly relying on someone else's affection to bring you
back to life, or make you whole, you will never truly be okay. You have to be completely
fine with yourself and your emotions even if it is sadness for a while,
otherwise you begin shutting those feelings down and replacing them with
anticipation of finding that happy again masked as butterflies for someone new.
This is a slippery slope, because if we are honest with ourselves, imagine how
many relationships you've entered because you were on the rebound and not quite
healed. Did those work out? Were you disappointed in the end? Let down? Didn't
you end up in the exact same situation you were trying to escape?
The reality is people are so afraid to be
alone with their thoughts, their feelings that we numb ourselves with more
"positive" feelings and situations. We treat romance and
courtship like a drug addiction. We never want to hit that low, so we're
constantly searching for a way to ride that high. It's destructive and I think
I've finally come to the conclusion that I am just as happy, just as fulfilled being
alone as I am in a relationship. Here's why...
I have given myself the time needed to heal;
I don't look for quick fixes, and definitely don't place MY emotional happiness
in the hands of someone else. I've learned to be my own solution. I cannot
stress the importance of being alone in times of sadness. You have to know that
you are capable of getting better on your own. You should rely on yourself to
get through it. If you constantly rely on a man (or woman's) affection to save
you, you start to think (unconsciously) that you can't do it alone. That the
only way to move on, or get happy is to have someone else want you or love you.
You have to love yourself enough to heal knowing that you are worth the
affection, not that it is the sole reason you were able to heal.
There is a strength you find when you do
it on your own, it makes you more confident, more sure of yourself and what YOU
need. It keeps you from perpetuating the cycle of jumping into bad
relationships you know deep down aren't worth it, they were merely a surrogate
to help you feel better about yourself in a time of weakness.
Essentially, you become an independent
boss ass bitch who doesn't need someone else to validate their feelings of
being a boss ass bitch. You just are. Then when you are ready you can look for
something healthy, someone up to your standards, who deserves YOUR affection,
because let’s be honest, it should be about what you need, what you want, and what
you deserve.
Go forth and conquer.
