After the fall

How exactly do you get over the loss of love? You dwell upon a single thought until near madness ensues. You block off all emotion, thereby snuffing the fragile flicker of a lost love. Feeling the sting of rejection and the seemingly endless torrent of sadness, you would most likely come to similar conclusions. After all, you must try and rid yourself of those poisoned thoughts and feelings. In all reality, there is no simple way to cleanse your system of love's vile residue. You do not get over the loss of love easily, you cope with its frequent pangs and eventually you allow yourself to become a new person, free of emotional baggage.

There are moments in a life that stand still. They imprint themselves into the mind; burrowing much like a tick under a host's skin. Moments like these constrict the heart; making breathing impossible. The face goes blank; shock barely registering, though internal thoughts are moving at inhuman speeds. Simple words claw their way into a mind; slowly being perceived, and processed. The end result is a wrenching unidentifiable pain that spreads slowly throughout the chest and seeps into the veins. At this point, the mind is in a haze; the stimulation is too much. When, finally, the mind swims its way through the fog, the antagonist is gone; the episode is over and the mind is left to reconcile with the rest of the body. So quickly things can happen without the mind ever realizing what actually happened. In a snap, six months of dedication and loyalty are thrown away at the whim of your significant other.

Left with the feelings of confusion, you naturally try to sort them out. Slowly recovering from the initial shock, you review every action that could have caused such an event. The botched pasta three months ago on someone's birthday didn‘t seem so horrible at the time, but given enough thought, the episode turns into a catastrophe. Feelings of inadequacy seem to run amok while moments in time are run over and over in the mind. Clinging to moronic, but reasonable ideas of what might have caused the rift, you try desperately to hold onto the fragile strands of sanity.

After you overanalyze all of the possibly wrong things in a relationship, you move on to all of the warming images, in an effort to deny a cold reality. Suddenly, all of the simple things are monumental. The stolen moments in the shower last Thursday before work seem to have lasted forever. What normally would have been a fleeting memory of a tryst becomes a marker in the mind, setting an example of everything lost. Overtaking the memories of things done wrong are all of the memories of what is gone. Pushing the burnt pasta aside are memories of soapy hands and water in the eyes. Listening to someone berate you for burning a meal, transforms into listening to soft giggles and the sound of water hitting bare skin. As sweet as the memories are though, they still cut deep under the skin. Their pleasing appeal mixes with the bitter conclusions of all the things done wrong to make one tumultuous mindset. You begin to doubt yourself, loose confidence, and as that happens, love’s malignant residue snickers and embeds itself deeper. Soon, it knows that the mind will be completely vulnerable to its next campaign.

All of the phases involved when trying to rid yourself of love’s taint are drawn out and seem to last a lifetime. Eventually you get through the first level, leaving the feelings of insanity and inadequacy behind you. At this point, you’ve reached the figurative eye of the storm. You walk around as if in a dream. Things affect you, but you really don’t perceive them. The world around you is artificial, as are your movements and actions. You walk down familiar halls and speak to your friends. Days pass as they normally would; you just go through them detached. You think that you’re over the pain of loosing someone now. That everything will be fine from here on out. Then you go home, settle down, and begin to watch a bit of late-night T.V. Unknowingly, you flick the channels and settle upon your chosen station. The show begins with some song from the 60s, it’s a little superficial this song, but it holds a little meaning to the scene and fits its role as background music. Before you can even realize what’s happening, tears are streaming down your face and sobs are wracking your frame. Of all the songs in the world they could have played, they play the song that she sang to you when you first met. Forgotten is the show that once held your attention. You’re stuck in memories of dark rooms, and sitting squnched in an armchair as she sang to you. Tears continue to stream down your face as all of the distance and supposed barriers you put up come tumbling down, and you’re left vulnerable and by yourself again. The song ends and the show continues, but you’re still a heap of weeping girl flesh. Amazement creeps into your mind, finding a small place in between the pain and depression. Vaguely you wonder how three minutes of hippie singing can reduce you to feeling like nothing once again, and as you wonder, love flexes its claws deep inside of you, infiltrating organs and tissues, sapping your life force like the best of the parasites do.

Recovering from a late-night breakdown can be precarious. You alternate between different mindsets of anger and misery. Your mood swings rival those of a pregnant woman. At this point, you really don’t know what you’re going to do to make yourself whole again. Some days you content yourself by trying to hate her. You look at all of the things she did to you and that you let her get away with, and you try your hardest to hate her. Self-righteous indignation fills the gaps that she made. Your anger fuels you for a day or two, your friends joining the crusade against your ex, and then you loose all of your wind. Something happens and you can’t find it in your heart to hate them, and you fall back into your only other emotion at the time. Depression sweeps your senses again as you try and come to terms with everything that has happened. You feel useless, like you can’t possibly do anything to get better or to become whole again. You let the nasty feelings settle like falling sediment around you. They build some kind of walls around you, keeping you in and not allowing you to break out of your funk. This could go on forever, but after a while something sparks an interest in the back of your mind and slowly begins burrowing through the depression’s thick walls.

By this time, months have passed, she’s moved on and you feel that you should too. That spark gave you some shred of hope and you’re clinging to it like a drowning man. Plans to recover begin to form, and you start acting upon them. You stop wearing the ring she gave you, no matter how beautiful. Gone are the t-shirts and sweaters that she gave you to sleep in, you’re once more sleeping in your normal duds. Little bits of memorabilia are relegated to the closet, in the ex box. You start to realize that you won’t ever hate her; that anything that causes this much pain has to have been worth it. You know that in some way, you’ll always love her and while it may not be the same intense love, it will always be there, in the back of your mind, ready to resurface whenever you think of her. Now, you feel it’s time to work on your plan of closure. Some people suggest burning the ex’s remnants, others say to jump right into another relationship. You can’t follow their commands; you have to find your own way to clear the way for something new.

Changing something on you can help. You remember the relief you felt when you cut all of your hair off after the last horrible break-up. Ideas of how to duplicate that feeling, that catharsis, start to emerge. They are filling your mind to the brim with outrageous plans of action. After weeks of deliberation, you find your change that you feel is sufficient enough to push you into the clear. You make arrangements and prepare yourself, knowing that it can only get better from here. Finally, your time comes, and you lay back. Tension and relaxation war inside of you, sweat drips from every pore and you wait on baited breath for them to strike. Your eyes shoot open as the needle passes through muscle and a scream is ripped from your lungs. Breath slowly comes back as the ring is pulled through and secured. You prepare yourself for the final stab of pain when the second you is pierced, and as you feel the needle move through your flesh and exit the other side, it takes with it all of the leftover feelings from your relationship.

Gone are the feelings of loss and depression. They are replaced now with not only the physical pain of a new piercing, but the feeling of release and closure, as you move into a new section of your life. The cathartic action of actually changing something on yourself allows you to change something inside of you. You don’t actually get rid of that evil love parasite; you just build up immunity to that species. The process of loosing someone dear to you is a trying one. It effects every aspect of your life, and in the end truly does change you. The change, however, all depends on the person and what they are willing to do to heal.