An interesting oxymoron of my life has been discovered again. This week has been incredibly packed with the completion of the school year. There had been a great deal of stress in the preceding weeks, complicated by months of a sluggish sickness. I had been pouring myself into my job. The pure panic and push of getting everything checked, graded, recorded, double-checked, filed, and reported is immense. And then suddenly the pendulum swings back, just as fast, and a void replaces the frantic pulse that was previously dictating my every breath. I so often hear teacher's chime to one another, "A teacher's job is never done." Which is true until the final report cards are completed. And then suddenly I have no idea what to do with t-i-m-e. It was uncomfortable at first, as if I had the wind knocked out of me. But then I took one breath after another. A smile spread over me, I closed my eyes and said, "Welcome, Summer."
Today is the worst day. He told me the upsetting truth, again, and this time I believed him. Even sleep was not a comfort.
Was wishing school would distract me enough. Obviously that didn't work out. Ran into the worst sort of trouble at a meeting. Such wicked, wicked people. The sort that just feast on others, like vultures.
Don't even worry about it. Already I am thinking that tomorrow it will be Yesterday.
I have this theory about breaking up. I figure you really need to live it (the break up) and to feel it, in order to get over it. Otherwise, you end up repressing emotions, harboring frustrations, and basically aiding and abetting distrust. Not a good thing. In some way, I think that if I don't truly experience it now...I will just have to do it later. I opt for getting on with it. Allowing myself to wallow in misery deeply so that I can all the sooner walk on.
He broke up with me on Good Friday. I gave myself until Easter morning to be truly miserable. Here is my rational: I figure that if Jesus can die on a cross on Good Friday and raise from the dead on Easter Morning then he can give me some new life in that amount of time too.
Now there are some rituals that I do in order to remember. I realized in my grade school years that my memories could very easily be triggered by familiar smells. Then in high school I read somewhere that around 80% of taste is connected with smell. Thus began the memory keeping.
I am here to tell you that breaking up with him tastes like lemonade. And I encouraged this. First we have to go back to the idea that I believe that I really need to experience the emotions of breaking up...to savor them now. Then I have to create a memory trigger. Enter the lemonade. Conveniently, that was what I was drinking the night we broke up. So I simply embraced the concept. That whole first weekend I chewed over relational mistakes and lemonade gum, I chocked back tears and chilled glasses, I inhaled memories and vitamin C, I bit my tongue and put on lip gloss...all flavored like lemonade. It works like a charm.
The first few days are the hardest, that's when I hurt the most. But every now and then I start to try to work it out again. I start to only remember the good times. That is when I know that it is time for a tall cool glass of lemonade. Time to remember what breaking up tastes like. Really it seemed at first like I was drinking the lemonade to get over it. Now it looks like I taste it to remember not to get hurt again.
