Love's labours: Postpartum
I thought i stopped eating on Tuesday afternoon and started barfing that night because that was about the time it became defined in my mind that we were done, "broken up" if you will--except that he'd never confessed to being a boyfriend in the first place**. But then i realised that i only had food poisoning or a virus or something. I'm not 21
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I can't force my way out of it, but i'm definitely much, much quicker to disengage from any identification with that feeling. Often i just start walking, and then i find that i've walked right out of it--or hiked, or danced, or hammer-and-nailed, or grooved to some fine music (which is very consciousness-altering), or socialised whether with good friends or a grocery store clerk. Dropping down into my body and doing instead of brooding is that technique.
More often, though, i use some intellectual tools i've established with time and practice. One thing i've been observing a lot in myself as this love thang was building up to breaking down, and in the week since, is just how hard it can be to hang onto any scrap of love of myself! Each time i fully realise that this is what's really going on--and that, my dear girl, is the demon riding on your back, too--i then have a much greater capacity to pull myself out of it. Most of us are not trained by others to be sufficient unto ourselves, and i say that not to suggest that a "whole" woman should need or desire no friends. Rather:
Absolutely the most important assignment to take upon yourself immediately is to begin to love & accept your perfectly human self SO truly and unconditionally that nobody else's disapproval, disinterest, underestimation, or insult can diminish it, and nobody else's love, desire, fascination, praise, or worship may actually improve it.
New habits of mind become more like second nature when you begin to receive positive reinforcement as a result of your efforts at trying on a more functional attitude, even when you're only faking it initially. Become aware of what you're telling yourself. Pay attention to pessimistic expectations. See yourself through the eyes of one of your true friends and imagine whether they would ever agree with the nasty things you believe about yourself. You're not apt to kill that Worthless demon flat & finally for some time, but you'll learn to distinguish the bastard from your divine, dirty self, and you'll develop ever more effective and delightful weapons for keeping its sorry ass at bay.
It's a widespread dis-ease, this hanging of our individual self-worth on others' hooks. One thing that's hard or even unimaginable in first taking it down is that each of us has to face how alone we actually are. To quit actively seeking to be liked or accepted by others means that you accept the alternative--that it's okay not to belong. But that does become okay, once you realise that you really are enough for yourself. Once you accept how fickle and empty popular approval is anyway. Once you accept that to lose a lover does not mean that you are not as wonderful as you felt when he was starry-eyed for you, does not mean that you were wrong about him, does not mean that love is lost, that love must be found. You have it. You are it. It's everywhere. It grows on trees.
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