My action is bad but your reaction is tragic, well, though both can be broken. I’m not your heart, I’m your habit. - Idle Warship"Well, please tell him I said hi. I hope he's doing well, I really do..." And for the first time, I really meant it because he was no longer my habit.
Like any start of a new year, we all make these resolutions to to be better versions of ourselves. For the most part we set ourselves up for failure because many of us go from 0 to 60, burn out, and then go back to what we've done in the past. What we forget most of the time is that for us to make these changes in our lives, it needs to gradually become habitual, but sometimes to make these changes, we need to break out of old habits as well.
One of the hardest habits to break is that of our hearts. Only a few days ago did I realize that I was truly liberated and ready to love again.
Let me explain what I mean because for those who know me well know the timeline of everything and are probably surprised as to why I'm even writing about this so late in the game.
First, the bottom line of this post is to say that breaking the habit of the heart takes a long time. Personally, I really thought it was a done process over a year ago; I moved on (literally and figuratively) and didn't care for the guy I was with for almost 4 years anymore. I knew that we were not right for one another and was simply okay with it. I looked straight ahead and marched forward with my life without him and mentally blocked out as much as I could. No more thoughts of what we could have been, what he did wrong, what I did wrong, or how I could have done things differently to prevent us from getting to that point. All thoughts and emotions of any kind were off limits. Out of sight, out of mind was my game.
Don't get me wrong, even getting to that point took a few months with the support of amazing family, friends, and a shrink. But for the longest time I didn't know what was holding me back when it came to starting any new relationships and why I was consistently self sabotaging myself in the whole relationship arena. Of course it made for funny stories on my other blog, but subconsciously I was doing it for a reason, but I never knew why.
It's true what they say: closure is overrated. But what they don't tell you is that closure with yourself is necessary to healing and that it's a journey that you have to do emotionally alone without any definite time.
About 9 months ago something happened that I didn’t expect; I cried for the first time when a friend convinced me to reach back out to him to say hello in hopes of signifying that we’re ok and that all anger on my part had ceased.
Those drops of tears happened because I finally confronted my feelings and emotions, and while there was no longer any romantic feelings for him, I realized there was still a different love for him. For a long time, I couldn’t distinguish the two feelings because it was stored away and temporarily blocked with anger and bitterness. While I didn’t care for him and rarely thought of him, I associated him to those feelings whenever a thought or a mention of him fleeted by.
I was at an impasse that I didn’t know existed. I had to break the habit of avoiding what was really lying there and associating it with the feeling of anger because that was the real reason preventing me to move forward and connecting with anyone else. The more I avoided it, the more inauthentic I became because I wasn’t able to connect to others. And until I could really strip away that bitterness that sat at the front of that barrier and look at what was real, I couldn’t move on.
"Well, please tell him I said hi. I hope he's doing well, I really do..." And for the first time recently, I really meant it because he was finally no longer a part of my habit.
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