Feelin' it.

I think it's normal and common for us lady friends (and our more musically-and-feelings-inclined guy friends) to listen to the worst sad songs ever right after a breakup. It kind of feels like sucking the poison out - we just gotta listen to this song and cry a bunch and think about how tragic love is and then we'll feel better! Remember when Carol broke up with Michael on The Office and he kept playing that clip from "Goodbye My Lover" by James Blunt?
 
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Yeah. It's kind of like that.

Or, like when you hear the new song by Linkin Park the day you move out of your boyfriend's apartment and you know instinctively that he'll probably love that song when he hears it and then you hear it again a couple weeks later and know instinctively again - because, I mean, you guys loved each other and just got each other and so you still just know when he would find something funny or awful or awesome - that he probably listens to it all the time now, thinking about how much he doesn't miss you, so instead of changing the radio really quick, instead you just let yourself listen to it and cry it out and get it over with.

You know...also like that.

It's like the musical form of cutting. You just need something to help you get it all out so you can start to feel better.

And here's the thing: it will make you feel better.

Here's what I know for sure (Ooooopprrraaaahhhh!): when you try to push away and stifle negative feelings, those feelings will grow five more heads and return later bigger and stronger and hungry for your (super cute) face.

So you gotta face it head on. 

You gotta feel it.

Feel those fuckin' feelings! 

I am totally that girl who never wants to cry. Even when I'm alone. I'm too strong, too independent, too smart, fuckthatguyI'mnotcryingoverhim. And I used to always feel like crying was just going to make me feel worse, so I never wanted to do it. And I know this is not an Amber-Specific thing. It's not a big secret that as humans, we are all secretly terrified of feeling pain. Emotional crap-type pain. We avoid that shit like nothing less.

(I was trying to think of a current pop culture media reference as a metaphor for the above, but I'm tired and nothing is coming to mind, so please feel free to insert your own and then congratulate yourself for being very current and hilarious. And make sure to share it in the comment section so I can steal it later and take all the credit for it)

So it kind of makes sense that, when it came to past breakups, my favorite method has always been declaring - mostly to myself - that I was Over It. I was DONE. Done done done. Over it!

But when we pretend that we're “over it” and push our crap feelings down, we don't really get “over it”.

Instead, we stuff our faces "over" it. 

We starve ourselves "over" it. 

We get drunk "over" it.

We get control-freaky "over" it.

We turn into workaholics "over" it.

We rebound "over" it. 

We shut people out "over" it. 

Right? I mean, how many times have we felt sad and told ourselves we were not going to feel sad so instead we grabbed our girlfriends to go out for drinks just to find ourselves drunk and sobbing into our pillows at the end of the night?

That kind of stuff is called self-medicating. We cover it up with methods we think will heal it, but won't. They take care of the symptoms for a while. Sometimes even for years. But they're not the cure. 

The only thing that is? 

Feeling those feelings. 

And then letting them go. 

Lemme explain:

After the Big Breakup, I didn't want to let this to be another point in my life where it took five years to get over someone because I was stuck in "I'm okay! But I'm not really okay..." denial land. So I made a gentle promise to myself that, this time, I wouldn't push those feelings away. When I felt like crying, I would cry. When I felt like being angry and bitter, I would let myself be angry and bitter. When I felt like freaking the fuck out, I would let myself freak the fuck out.

But here was the trick: I wasn't going to roll around and soak in those feelings all day, either. There's this meditation method called the Feeling practice (taken from the book Add More ~ING To Your Life by Gabrielle Bernstein) that says that, "in order to heal it, ya gotta feel it. When you are willing to experience your negative feelings, they release." So don't push it away: allow that feeling to pass through for 90 seconds (don't worry about timing it, though. That would be weird and restrictive and slightly control-freakish, which kind of goes against the whole point). And once it passes through, take those negative feelings and ease them into positive ones. 

Stay with me here.

Remember the Written Shot of Courage?

I would read it then. Or, if the negative feeling or thought had to do with something outside of that realm, I would simply write down or repeat the opposite: the positive mirror of that fear. You can call them affirmations if you want. Most of the time, though, what they really are is the truth.

So I decided to just let myself practice this and see if it worked. And you know what? It really, really helped. I've had friends comment on how well I seem to be doing, considering, and I can nod my head and honestly agree that I'm dealing with the whole thing much better than I thought I would be. It doesn't mean I'm not still sad. It doesn't mean that I'm not heartbroken - I am, and greatly so. It doesn't mean I don't feel angry and bitter and awful and overwhelmed with stunted love and full of missing and occasionally blind with regret. I feel all those things, at different times and sometimes all at the same time. It's just that when I start to feel those feelings, I give myself permission to really feel them. To hang out with them. Get curious about them. Allow them to pass fully through and then out, like a bird escaping a room through an open window.

And after doing it for a few weeks, I can also tell, now, when I'm not letting myself do that, for whatever reason. I had a tough weekend, and I could tell that I was having a tough weekend because I ignored my list of things I wanted to get done in favor of a couch and ice cream and crap TV. And I felt shitty at the end of the day, and while I told myself I felt that way because I had been a lazy ass and ate a bunch of junk, it was really because I was sad and missed him and I wasn't allowing myself to admit it and deal. So I turned on that goddamn Linkin Park song and let myself sob it out. I let myself think about and feel all the things that hurt so badly right now - the life I thought we were going to have that we're not going to have anymore, at least not together. The people and the animals and the experiences that were a part of our life that I now have to miss. The daily living life of someone I love that I'm no longer a part of. That I no longer get to witness.

It is tough shit.

But after I cried it out for a while, I started to think about the other things. The irrefutable fact that makes it impossible for us to be together anymore. The acknowledgment that I was brave enough to break my own heart so we could both have the kind of lives we wanted for ourselves. The keen hope that I'm not done yet. That this isn't the end of me or the life I want to live, not by a long shot. That maybe this is yet another relationship that wasn't as successful as I wanted it to be, but I sure as hell am getting pretty fucking good at all this life stuff because of it.

And then I got up, washed my face, meditated, and got back to doing the things I wanted to do.

Because I felt better, the way I do now when I let myself just give in to that space for a little bit. Lighter. Like I can breathe again and maybe this wasn't the end of the world, after all, and so let's get back on track and return to what kind of beginning we want to make this.

And again, like the Written Shot of Courage, this isn't just a breakup thing. It's a people thing. A crisis thing. A bad day thing. And every-day thing. A life thing. Shit gets rough, man. Let's stop making it rougher by pretending that the rough stuff doesn't exist and that we aren't affected by it. Because we are, and when we take a step back, it's one of the best things about us: the fact that we feel. The fact that we're capable of feeling.

Because also, have you ever met a sociopath? I have. And they are scary fucking shit.

So even if it's just for little bit, embrace the thing inside of you that gives you the ability to have feelings. Feel it up! Break out that sad-sap playlist, that pile of break-up-esque movies. Give yourself an hour or two to just get real with what you're going through (that rhymes. Because I'm not just a blogger...I'm a poet). Be good to yourself. Don't be your own worst jerk friend when it comes to your bad day. Give yourself a break so you can fully brush yourself off and get on with the business of living your new kick-ass life.

Because you do have to get on with the business of living your new kick-ass life.

And this is where the really good stuff begins.

So stay tuned, pumpkin face.