HTDWYFH: The New Not Normal

PHOTO CREDITS: BILL BADI

ACT I, SCENE I

For a while post-breakup, I thought I was going through the seven stages of grief. In many ways, it made sense. I was grieving. I lost a best friend, my greatest support system crumbled, my trust was fractured, and my heart was broken. The pain I felt was constant and seemingly everlasting. Even seeing a meme that reminded me of my ex and getting the urge to share it would hurt because it was a reminder of the deep, numbing void in my heart where he used to be. It was a reality check that my new ‘normal’ was a life without him in it.

Plus, I experienced a range of emotions that fit into similar categories—shock, denial, depression, anger. At times I decided that I couldn’t possibly have had experienced real love (because how could he lose feelings so quickly if he truly loved me?), and at other times I feared I had lost a love so special and one-of-a-kind that I fell into depression. Some days I would blame myself for not trusting my gut when it narrowed its eyes at ‘she’s just a friend, babe.’ Other days I would curse my ex for emotionally cheating on me and choosing the easy route when I had given him every last piece of me. Ironically, I started looking at the connections between my emotions and the stages of grief because I thought it would make me feel less crazy. If emotional turbulence in response to a major life event was normal, so was I.  But the more I tried to make the comparison, the worse I felt.

Turns out it’s a very flawed concept. You can’t just assess your feelings, attribute them to one of the seven stages of grief, and use the order of those seven stages to pinpoint how far along you are in the process of moving on with your life. And you know why? The stages of grief are supposed to look like this:

And life? Life is never as simple as a graph. Progress is never as perfect as an upwards trend, let alone exponential growth. You’re gonna have good days, great days even, when the sun will be shining, you’ll realize you haven’t thought of him in awhile, and you get excited that you’re actually moving on. But bad days will come. When you least expect it, you’ll find a dusty picture in the back of your drawer, or an old writing assignment. You’ll re-read it and realize that in true Angelina-the-hopeless-romantic style, you wrote your dreams of the future into the story of a screenwriting exercise. ‘Bill, mid-40s, DILF, but a kid at heart.’ You laugh, because it’s totally his personality. But then you see: ‘Bill, Jr. “Junior” 13, sneakerhead, overly concerned with having all the coolest things…Kiki, 7, a clever little thing who uses her charms and good looks to get what she wants.’ You cry.

The best thing to do for yourself now, is to keep reminding yourself there is no such thing as a normal response to a breakup. There’s no formula for moving on, there’s no breakup playlist that will cure all (no matter how many Beyoncé anthems it may have). And don’t forget, the ‘life is a rollercoaster’ cliché is true. It is oh so very true.

Never feel bad for having ups and downs (to be nerdy, oscillation is a-okay!!). Either try to have lots of faith in yourself that you will be just fine or try to surround yourself with loved ones who will instill that faith in you. You have too much in store for you to stay stuck in the past forever, but take all the time you need to get to a place where you’re ready to start the process.

Missed the introduction? Read it here.

Also, let me know in the comments below if you can relate/this is helpful. Tell me if you want me to keep this personal, or if you want more of an advice column kind of thing! Any feedback is helpful so I know what you guys would like to see:)