Someone once told me that hope dies last…or perhaps I saw it on an episode of Dawson’s Creek (they are the bandaid to my broken heart, I am on season 5, yep its been a tough heartbreak). Like life I’m not sure if that is a terribly sad thing or if it should give me…well, hope. I suppose it is possible that you are exactly the right person you should be at the right place at the right time in the big picture, and it is pointless asking yourself why people do what they do. Yesterday was two months since LA broke up with me. I have used this name intentionally: Los Angeles. People forget that my love strode oceans and two entire continents. I left my entire life behind in Africa and went to the US to be with my love and begin a new life. So when that dream ended not only did she break up with me but She broke up with me: thats right, a freaking entire country broke up with me! So you will bear with me if I am still torn up about it. In addition other things have come up which tear at my wounds and scars and so prevent healing. I will not go into detail because that would be taking the low road, (see previous post: high road low road) and as I have said it is not what I choose to do. Just know that I am angry, which is a word like love, it really does not describe the emotion at all, it does not come even close. The fact is I also live with the consequences of her, LA’s, decisions every day. I came back to a roof (thank goodness I did not sell my property and it wasn’t rented out before I returned), a few possessions and very little else. I had to go to my brother to ask for a job in his factory (a humiliating thing to have to do) where I now work from about 5am to 5pm Monday to Friday and generally on Saturdays for 6 hours. Do you know what it’s like to work in a factory?
Of course obviously things could be worse and I am grateful that I have a job (thanks to my brother) and a roof over my head (pure luck), but its’ kind of like saying to a person with no legs that at least they have a wheelchair. Living with, and having to deal with the consequences of your own actions is one thing, having to do endure the consequences of another’s is totally different thing. It’s like being sentenced to do prison time for a crime you did not commit… in this case, I guess my only crime was loving somebody and wanting to make them happy, truly, truly happy. Yes I know, boo hoo, poor me! Bear with me, as I often say, I am not trying to illicit sympathy, seriously, and I will get to my point, I promise. OK, I am going to return to my favoured technique of visualisation to show you how I deal with this emotional minefield I am passing through.
I played rugby with some success for a major portion of my life, from the age of 13 until I was 36. It is a contact sport, and one of its little pleasures is the early season roastie! I am not sure if this is a South Africanism, but a roastie is what we call a graze, you know, when you have fallen and the skin has been scraped. I assume that the name originates from the fact that the scab that forms over this graze looks like the skin on roasted meat (I am soooo glad I am a vegetarian). Yeah, you normally pick up an early season roastie while your body acclimatises again to the knocks, bangs and abrasions of the sport. Now the thing about this roastie is that if it is a decent sized one, and in the right spot, it will last for a couple of months. This is because every practise and every game its scab will be ripped off in the first tackle you are involved in or the first fall you have. This is inevitable, so the best thing to do is not hold back but commit yourself to play and get on with it, scream when it happens, but keep on playing. Generally we players would smother the roastie with Vaseline prior to playing, this would soften the crispy, “roastie” crust so it sort of just slid off when contact was made rather than being ripped off. After each practise or game when we had showered and scrubbed the wounds clean, the official mercurochromer (who ever the coach has selected for that week) would check them and then administer said mercurochrome to wounds. Pain (again, the inability of a word to describe a sensation) does not even begin to express what you experience when that stuff makes contact with a wound, but it prevents infections and helps the healing process. As I said, these roasties could last a couple of months, but they would slowly get smaller and shallower and one day the final scab would flake off leaving shiny new skin below it and it would be over for that season. The trick to quicker healing is not to let it get infected and to not let it hold you back from committing yourself to the game, the roastie will come off regardless of whether you do or not.
So do you see where I am going with this? When someone breaks up with you or dumps you (and I’m not talking because you were cheating or a shit to them), I mean out of the blue, for their own selfish reasons does that, you will have a wound, which as time passes will begin to heal. Unfortunately the wound will be opened time and time again because with Facebook and a myriad of other social connections the World is an incredibly small place, and the fact is that people are insensitive and self-involved and quite frankly often just don’t give a damn! So you will be exposed to things that will hurt so much you will want to scream. You will be hurt and angry and will want to either withdraw or lash out or both. Don’t. The wound will not heal and will over time get infected and poison you. I am not saying you don’t have the right to feel anger but feel it and carry on. Get involved, keep involved. In my case, I have gone back to volunteering at an animal shelter called Hillside Haven, if helping disabled animals does not make you feel good as well as better about yourself then I don’t know what will.
The fact is you will feel bad about yourself, this person who has broken up with you (unless they are one of the rare ones) will have left you feeling like there is something wrong with you, that your love is worth nothing and that anything they said to you during your relationship was a lie. That is something terrible to experience, so what I am saying is take back your self-worth. Do things that help you regain the self-esteem and feeling of self-worth that was taken from you. I seriously recommend volunteer work but also surround yourself with people who appreciate the person you are, and partake in things that improve on the you, you are, nothing wrong with that. I have my art studies and upcoming exhibitions so these are a great help also for me in my healing process. Creating is an incredible tool for healing: take an art class or a cooking class or a dance class or just attend a course on a subject that interests you. Hell, repaint your bedroom, recycle, donate to a charity, in other words do something positive. Don’t, for goodness sake, allow permanent feelings for a temporary person, and if this person has allowed you to feel bad about yourself that is what they should be in your life, temporary, followed by non-existent. The fact is they were never worth it to begin with.
So that’s my visualisation: roasties, Vaseline, mercurochrome. Ha ha ha, I hope you got it, and I hope it helps, emoting like this helps me, so thank you for your time. 🙂