Acceptance/ Your Long-Awaited Update
According to the Kubler-Ross model, there are five stages of grief and loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Usually, this process is referred to when dealing with a death, but I have experienced every single one of those emotions since the breakup that spawned this blog nearly a year and a half ago.
I have denied the reality of our split, showing up at his doorstep at all hours of the night and insisting that we are still a couple whether he likes it or not, damn it. I have angrily dialed him and ranted on his voicemail about what a jerk he was and how he treated me horribly and can we please get back together before I die from the pain?
And when the bursts of anger did nothing to get him back or to even make me feel better, I bargained. I bargained with him, I bargained with myself. I’d chide myself to “get your shit together,” and be the perfect girl that he couldn’t bear to live without. I quit drinking so he’d see how much I was willing to sacrifice to be with him. I even bargained with the universe. If I pay my parking tickets, will you please bring him back to me? I suppose I can blame the five delinquent tickets that remain on my record for my continued single status.
Then there was the depression, a stage I thought would never end. It was the longest stage and I blamed myself for not being able to pull myself together and get over him. Sometimes it would ebb, give up a little, and I’d think I was coming out of it. I’d go on a promising date or get excited about things going on in my life, like graduating college.
And then I’d get a glimpse online or hear a snippet from a mutual friend of what he was doing and I’d spiral right back down. I had a reader tell me once that when I saw him down the road with someone new, it would be like we were breaking up all over again. I scoffed and insisted he’d never settle down. It wasn’t in him. And then he did. And fuck, she was right. How could he be so happy when I was still so miserable? How was he fine- scratch that- better than fine and experiencing all the successes he’d ever wanted, while I was floundering, alone and directionless?
But eventually you get busy. And you meet people who make you laugh and you go a day or two without obsessing. You forget to worry about him or compare all his successes to all the shortcomings you are feeling in your own life. And that’s when you get to acceptance.
I haven’t written in a while and I realize that the further I get from the relationship, the harder it is to give him my time, my thoughts. To get to acceptance, and believe me I waver between acceptance and regressing to depression on a pretty regular basis, I’ve had to distract myself. To not let myself think about him or what he’s doing. That can get pretty hard when you’re writing about the person.
But I love the people who read this blog. Every comment, every “like,” every new person that follows my story and lives every emotion I have felt for the past year or so, inspires me to come back here. So for the people who have wondered aloud where I am all this time later, this is what acceptance is like for me:
I have my good days and unfortunately some bad ones thrown in there as well. A good day is when I don’t think of him at all. I like those days, but I usually don’t get to celebrate their existence till he pops into my head and I realize it has been days since the last time I thought of him.
And then there are the bad days. There’s fewer and fewer of them, but that almost makes them worse. They are the days when I look up his new girlfriend’s Facebook page to see if her profile picture still shows him dipping her romantically in Prague. The days when I check his old work website to see if he’s still toiling away at the job he used to complain to me about. I look to see if he’s left it like he kept saying he would. Those days, I can lose hours searching the internet for clues, almost as if to see if he still exists. When I am exhausted by the dead ends, I succumb to depression.
Most days, though, he’ll pop into my head for a minute or so, triggered by a song or an article in a magazine, until I can successfully shake him out, distracting myself with loud music or mindless chatter with a friend. Sometimes, I want to email him, share a funny story with him or recommend a movie I’ve seen. I don’t. I know all too well how easily an ok day can turn into a bad one.
But all ll in all, I guess shit isn’t so bad. I haven’t hopped a fence in over a year. I smile more than I cry. And I’m pretty sure I can make it through The Notebook without breaking down into sobs, although I’m gonna hold off on proving that theory for the moment.
I have to admit though, those black pickup trucks? Well, they still make my heart sink.
