Unfortunately, with huge life changes, things left unsaid and feelings you buried beneath a layer of whatever begin to rise to the surface like zombies. You thought they were dead and gone and BAM! You are running for your life, trying to decide the best way to defend yourself...from yourself or how from how badly someone else has hurt you. Machete, sawed-off shotgun or both? I think my metaphor got away from me. Zombies tend to do that...In any case, I read this last night and found that it resonated with me.
"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love." --Neil Gaiman
The article I read on sugar withdrawal equated it with drug addiction. We eat sugary things because they give us a sense of euphoria. They're comfort foods. What woman hasn't indulged in a carton of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia after a breakup? It's all well and good when you have a steady supply of sugar. You don't even think about, because it's just food you enjoy. Once you take refined sugar out of the equation, you are left without that emotional safety net. It sends you into a spiral of crazy. Trust me. Been there. Without it, you are left to process through the feelings that you covered with a pint...or two...of ice cream or a bag full of Godiva Milk Chocolate and Caramel Gems. Those feelings never went away. They were waiting like sneaky, hateful ninjas so they can sabotage any attempt you have made to get yourself together.
I'm not sure what emotions I'm processing, but since the Neil Gaiman quote struck a nerve, I can make an educated guess about one of them. My last breakup was just the icing on the huge-layer cake of suck that my life was for the last three years. With everything else that was going on in my life, I didn't have time to have a mental breakdown, so everything got squished down and compartmentalized. But you know what? I'm really angry about it. Furious. And that's okay. It's okay to be angry because the situation warranted a certain amount of righteous anger. There is also hurt. A terrible hurt. A hurt that would be crippling if I let it. But I am made of sterner stuff. I will soldier on as I always have. He was just a boy. A stupid, beautiful, wonderful boy who carved out a place in my heart and soul, and thoughtlessly left those places raw and bleeding when he went.
Thank you, Neil Gaiman, for living in my head.
No comments:
Post a Comment