Several years ago, I was given unexpected bad news by my then-wife. She was cheating on me so she wanted a divorce. "Love" had punched a hole in my chest, ripped out my heart out, and with it still beating in its' grasp, broke my heart in my face. As I fell to my knees, I outstretched my arms to stop myself but the ground gave in below me.
I tumbled into the abyss of depression, thus touching off the cycle of grief. The grieving the death of my relationship.
You see, I don't share this many, but as an adolescent I struggled and battled with depression. It wasn't diagnosed but 20 years later I'm confident it was. In fact, I believe it's why I love to entertain and make others laugh and feel good. I know what it's like to feel otherwise.
I digress.
Without a relationship, and a new perceived away of "Love", I had time to be alone with my thoughts. If you know me, and still reading this, this situation can be dangerous.
First item for me to address, was to crawl my way out of the abyss since the darkness was rendering me useless. I have an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that thousands, hundreds of thousands of men and women scarified their lives for this right so I thought it best to honor it.
Well, I needed a light to fixate on in all that darkness. The various organizations and companies taught me their mission and vision statements, mottos, slogans and more, so since I'm an army of one I needed a mantra. I created: Keep digging. I inked my body with it.
Perfect, I thought.
At anytime I can rally behind it when my faith wavered. It's a popular saying, it's an ideology, and it's easy to understand. So I set out to do battle with "Love".
The first stage for me was "denial and isolation". I started to transition to "anger", and "bargaining". This pain and hurt was so deep and primal that I vowed to never allow that again while I was alive. Unfortunately, that also meant I couldn't love again.
Which guaranteed me a re-visit of denial and isolation.
I shrugged. It was rule 2 of life: A man's gotta do, what a man's gotta do.
So, you ask? How did I plan on expressing my anger? Easy, I thought. I would mete out punishment of my love-pain to "Love" and it's participants.
In order to do that, I worked so I was the pinnacle of aesthetics and vanity. I had to be the best looking version of myself to be able to romance and seduce women only to discard them just as quickly.
Once satisfied with the final product, I set out to punish "Love", and mete this out. As you could see this is an inherently flawed plan. Diabolic, in fact. And diametrically opposed to my entire being.
Date after date, girl after girl, I quickly realized that this isn't working for me. My mindset isn't hardwired for this behavior, my heart hurts when I hurt someone else's, my soul's love-DNA (yeah, I made that up) is genetically not for this.
Ugh.
I stopped immediately thus re-entering all but one of the stages of grief simultaneously: anger, denial, bargaining, and depression. The one that always escaped me: acceptance.
For a couple of years I kept digging along, singing a song. One day? The one day, without realizing it my mind, body and soul had accepted the grief and death of the relationship. The thought of being in a relationship of any kind didn't make me shutter or defensive. Or upon hearing my exe's name I didn't feel a pang of anger and revenge which would generally resulted in an insulting joke as her as the punchline.
In fact, I felt no different. I was amazed. I've achieved neutrality. I closed the loop of grief with acceptance.
And that, my friends, afforded me to meet someone of my dreams that caused a paradigm shift in my life's outlook. Her name?
Cher Jones Rasmussen
This has been my C-Note.
'los; out
(to be continued ...)
I tumbled into the abyss of depression, thus touching off the cycle of grief. The grieving the death of my relationship.
You see, I don't share this many, but as an adolescent I struggled and battled with depression. It wasn't diagnosed but 20 years later I'm confident it was. In fact, I believe it's why I love to entertain and make others laugh and feel good. I know what it's like to feel otherwise.
I digress.
Without a relationship, and a new perceived away of "Love", I had time to be alone with my thoughts. If you know me, and still reading this, this situation can be dangerous.
First item for me to address, was to crawl my way out of the abyss since the darkness was rendering me useless. I have an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that thousands, hundreds of thousands of men and women scarified their lives for this right so I thought it best to honor it.
Well, I needed a light to fixate on in all that darkness. The various organizations and companies taught me their mission and vision statements, mottos, slogans and more, so since I'm an army of one I needed a mantra. I created: Keep digging. I inked my body with it.
Perfect, I thought.
At anytime I can rally behind it when my faith wavered. It's a popular saying, it's an ideology, and it's easy to understand. So I set out to do battle with "Love".
The first stage for me was "denial and isolation". I started to transition to "anger", and "bargaining". This pain and hurt was so deep and primal that I vowed to never allow that again while I was alive. Unfortunately, that also meant I couldn't love again.
Which guaranteed me a re-visit of denial and isolation.
I shrugged. It was rule 2 of life: A man's gotta do, what a man's gotta do.
So, you ask? How did I plan on expressing my anger? Easy, I thought. I would mete out punishment of my love-pain to "Love" and it's participants.
In order to do that, I worked so I was the pinnacle of aesthetics and vanity. I had to be the best looking version of myself to be able to romance and seduce women only to discard them just as quickly.
Once satisfied with the final product, I set out to punish "Love", and mete this out. As you could see this is an inherently flawed plan. Diabolic, in fact. And diametrically opposed to my entire being.
Date after date, girl after girl, I quickly realized that this isn't working for me. My mindset isn't hardwired for this behavior, my heart hurts when I hurt someone else's, my soul's love-DNA (yeah, I made that up) is genetically not for this.
Ugh.
I stopped immediately thus re-entering all but one of the stages of grief simultaneously: anger, denial, bargaining, and depression. The one that always escaped me: acceptance.
For a couple of years I kept digging along, singing a song. One day? The one day, without realizing it my mind, body and soul had accepted the grief and death of the relationship. The thought of being in a relationship of any kind didn't make me shutter or defensive. Or upon hearing my exe's name I didn't feel a pang of anger and revenge which would generally resulted in an insulting joke as her as the punchline.
In fact, I felt no different. I was amazed. I've achieved neutrality. I closed the loop of grief with acceptance.
And that, my friends, afforded me to meet someone of my dreams that caused a paradigm shift in my life's outlook. Her name?
Cher Jones Rasmussen
This has been my C-Note.
'los; out
(to be continued ...)
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