Question for you guys

[spazmy]

Quick poll. When does one have closure?

 

For me, it is the day you recognize with absolute clarity how little those you love, respect you in return. That is the day the last vestiges of love leave you and you begin to walk, like Mr. Mandela, towards freedom.

 

I write this because, I have, after one and a half years, finally reached that stage. I feel I am ready to date again and think of a life with somebody else. It was slow and painful, but I came to this point finally. I do not feel any regrets or any guilt about thinking of others any more.

 

I wouldn't say I found myself again, as much as I found what I did not want to be or continue being. And the moment I knew this about myself, I knew there was nothing in the past for me anymore. Only the future.

 

It is a most liberating experience -- and I assure those of you who are in pain right now, you will most definitely get past it. If I can do it, with what my ex and my crush once identified as my "passionate" nature, anybody else can. "Time," genuinely, is the ultimate healer -- the only problem though is that we can never have enough of it (time that is) ;-)

[kaoticbaby]

for me, it's when i finally realize that we really are better off without each other. but then that begs the question, at what point exactly does THAT happen? ah, the healing powers of time...

[Crazyaboutdogs]

Good for you that you finally have closure and are ready to move on. Your reference to time made me think of the great Pink Floyd song, Time

 

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way

Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town

Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

 

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

 

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking

And racing around to come up behind you again

The sun is the same in the relative way, but youre older

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

 

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time

Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way

The time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say

 

Home, home again

I like to be here when I can

And when I come home cold and tired

Its good to warm my bones beside the fire

Far away accross the field

The tolling of the iron bell

Calls the faithful to their knees

To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

[spazmy]

Kaoticboy, you are right. But honestly, so long as you talk in terms of a "we" you are never entirely out of the situation. For that to happen, a complete rending has to happen, where you can calmly come to terms with thinking of yourself as almost absolutely "Other" to the other -- no in terms of a feeling of mutual separation. Don't you think? What the other thinks should no longer matter.

 

And thanks CAD. Yes, that song says a lot about how time works. While a lot of people say time is the healer, it is also something precious that we lose in the process of healing. The time of healing is valuable in terms of self-learning, but it also is time lost in terms of companionship and time lost in terms of knowing how to relate. Ultimately, all the wisdom, all the insights gained through the time of self-assessment and growth after the breakup, is finally packed into the few years of application that will be left after the process of healing. I can say that I lost a sum total of six years of my life. Four and a half building a relationship from scratch, and one and a half years recovering from it and recovering my capacity to trust and respect the significant other. I do not say this in a selfish way -- but I do feel that all this time, were I in a healthy relationship where the other and I behaved in a mature way, we could have accomplished so much good professionally and also socially, for others in society.

 

I would say that these past six years were years of indulgence, which ultimately left me with a lot of wisdom, but very little to show in terms of having done anything meaningful for others. Perhaps I can now begin to do this finally and think of myself in relationship to society and somebody else within it who is deserving of my love and not in terms of those from my past who can only think of themselves. I do not hate them, I just finally feel the right amount of indifference towards them -- and I feel indifference is the only thing I can afford to give them -- for it is too much work and pain to give anything more to them -- when others more deserving need my presense and my love elsewhere.

 

This is what I meant by freedom.

[Crazyaboutdogs]

Time is not wasted if you have grown and learned from the experience. I truly believe that things happen for a reason...that we have to learn certain lessons in order to prepare us for something better that comes along. I certainly learned that when I spent years struggling with my career, not understanding why I was wasting years in dead end unsatisfying jobs and getting nowhere with my job hunt for what I thought would be a more fulfilling job. It turns out the lessons I learned from the years in dead end jobs and the years of sending out CVs for my "dream job" actually prepared me for my career change. The time I thought I was wasting, I actually wasn't wasting because the lessons I learned have served me well. If I wouldn't have gone through what I went through, I wouldn't have been as well prepared for the career change...in fact, my so-called "dream job" that I never got, would have been my nightmare.