I do…
3 letters, 2 little words, 1 big meaning…
But what does it mean:
A really expensive piece of jewelry?
Your financial wealth has substantially
increased?
The end of lonely nights?
The joining of two families?
I suppose what it’s suppose to ultimately
mean - to be with the person you love til death do you apart…
As I was one minute away from attending a
wedding reception, I hear the news that my ex of 5 years got engaged. My
friends all found out at the wedding ceremony which I didn’t attend. I went from
chirpy, outgoing self to instant silence. It’s not that I’m surprised, I was
shocked and I didn’t know how to respond to that… I allowed the roller coaster
of emotions to hit me and I tried mask it with the over-the-top smiles and
laughter.
As I arrived at the reception and see the
man that I use to love so deeply, it seems like we are the perfect strangers
now. During the 4 hours that I endured sitting on the same table. Our
conversation only got as far as the standard: “hello, how are you?” The same
conversation that I have with my building maintenance guy whenever I see him (I
don’t even know his name)… How do you go from the status of a family member to the
status of a building maintenance guy?
According to psychologists, there are 5
stages of grief and I observed myself going through each and one of them
1)
Denial
This is the inbuilt self defense mechanism
that we all have when it comes to dealing with bad news. No! This cannot be! –
I got through this stage pretty quickly by asking a few more friends to confirm
the news.
2)
Anger
I suppose I was angry… I kept thinking to
myself what an idiot he was - since when did lower your standards become an aim
after a break up? I think by hating his decision - that was the anger within me.
I did not believe they could be ‘in love’ (I still some what doubt it) and I
suppose I was angry at him for not taking time to be in grief (like me!)
In this stage, you normally need to ask
yourself who are you angry at? Am I angry at him for wanting to marry someone
else? Am I angry at the girl for luring him to her? Am I angry at his parents
for allowing this to happen when 6 months ago they told me they still wanted to
see us get back together?
3)
Bargaining
I think this is the most embarrassing stage
to admit to. This is the stage where I doubt why I broke up with him in the
first place. I keep thinking maybe I should have tried harder. If I gave up my
personality and changed all my values and who I aspire to be, then we can get
back together. Maybe if I moved back to China and be a housewife that he always
wanted, we can get back together. Maybe If I told him I accept all his flaws and
I will be happy to get engaged/married immediately, he will leave that girl for
me…?
This is probably the most difficult for me…
and it quickly leaded to the next stage (and this is the worst).
4)
Depression
After the previous 3 stages, you start to
realize it ‘really’ has come to an end, and we deal with depression. This was
not easy as I was in front of over 100 people and many common friends. There
were uni friends that I haven’t seen for a long time (many were
engaged/married) and asked me where was my boyfriend. I responded by saying we
broke up and answered a few more questions about my ex who was literally
standing 2meters away.
This was hard. Whenever the live band came
on and sang slow love songs, I desperately wanted to cry. I coped by
distracting myself with avalanches of
texts to my friends for comfort. I also couldn’t let him see that I was
upset so I laughed, sang and put on such a good show of how happy I am and how
much I am enjoying myself. And whenever I heard a love song that reminded me of
the time we shared, I would just walk outside and smoked outside by myself like
I was some kind of addict (I actually had no desire to smoke but really needed
the excuse).
It was only when at the end of ‘Jason Mraz
- I’m yours’ and as the last words of the song “this is our fate” and the
candle in front of me blew out… I knew that it is true… although he was sitting
diagonally opposite me, we couldn’t be more distant in our separate worlds and maybe
this is our fate…
5)
Acceptance
Some days I feel like I am at this stage
and other day I feel like I’m just doing
the tango with the previous 4 stages. On the day when I found out his
engagement, I reached this stage close to the end of the night. Like Nelson
Mandela once said “resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping that it
will kill your enemy”. That’s how I felt for most of the night. But I have come
to the fact that people move on. I was the one who chose to walk out of his
life, and I hurt him so badly. I remember when he told me about how hurt he
was, how I shattered all his dreams and hope for the future, how the pain that
he endured was beyond words, and how he lived in our apartment and everything
reminded him of me… Why am I like this? He has finally found his joy and
happiness and moved on from the pain and suffering… I should be happy for him!
If I didn’t want to marry him, why should I be so selfish to not allow him to
marry someone else?
At one stage, he was everything that I ever
asked for and more. At some stages of our relationship, we were deeply in love
beyond words can describe. “People change. Feelings change. It doesn’t mean
that the love once shared wasn’t true and real. It simply just means that
sometimes when people grow, they grow apart”.
I suppose I’m just afraid… afraid to fall
in love again, afraid to ‘grow apart’ again, afraid that perhaps I’ll never
meet someone like him, afraid that perhaps no body would love me as much as he
once did, afraid that I would never share that bond with someone. I suppose I
was young and could do the whole ‘crazy stupid love’ thing, but now it’s almost
like I am so jaded that I don’t even know what love is anymore…
I read up about this stage and it said:
“believe it or not, at the end of all of this, you will eventually reach a day
when you have accepted the situation. No matter how many times you passed back
and forth between the stages listed above, you will one day find that those
stages are finally done. You will think of your ex or even run into him or be
friends with her again and you will no longer feel angry or sad. You will no
longer be trying to fix things or wishing that things were different or trying
to get back what you once had or blaming the other person for things going
wrong. You will have accepted that things were the way they were, the situation
ended as it did, you grew as a person and its all okay. It feels like you will
never get to this as you go through the trauma of a breakup but eventually,
believe it or not, if you’ve dealt properly with the other four stages of grief
then you really will get to this one. Hang in there!”
Some things just need time… no one ever
said it was going to be easy, but it will definitely be worth it… and perhaps
some day… I will be the one to say I do… but until then I do wish him for the
all the joy and happiness in the world…
It’s like that quote from the descendants:
good bye my love, my friend, my pain, my joy…
I sent him a text the next day to
congratulate him on his engagement…
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