I am glad the words I sent touched you. I felt the importance of yesterday as a day in your life. I felt the importance of having, finally, a day to move ahead, onwards, towards a new life that brings with it, all that you have experimented to date. It is not easy to place feelings anywhere during and after days like yesterday. It is not easy to find access to clarity in days like yesterday. I think people tend to actually walk ahead without giving much consideration to the real breaking points in life. Usually, because there is much suffering ahead of those moments or so much hardship, or so many feelings prior to reaching to the moment that when it is all said and done, they just walk.
I think it is critical to recognize the emotional exhaustion. It is critical to realize that you have a right to continue rebuilding yourself and that you put the standards for your happiness sky high. I have gone through a similar process than yours in a similar time frame, i.e. coping with giving way to the process of turning my identity inside out. The process, however, still remains in me. It has spreaded out to a few others but very few indeed. Because it is my process. It is my private adventure of getting to know myself. And the baggage or the weights of this process only I can understand. Others have helped, but I know it best. Your situation was so much more complex. It entailed departing away from a love a standard a history. It entailed finding yourself having to give explanations that I know are hard to give because it really should not matter to anyone but you and that other person. But, your process had so much more weight than mine.
When I look at my situation, I notice periods of intense solitude, of mind wandering, of questioning. I am my worse critic but my only saviour. I am my harshest advisor but my only caretaker. Those moments are not light. Those discussions, when they take place inside one's body (somewhere between the mind and the heart), are dense and dark, and often last for a very long time until solutions are reached. Internal struggles hurt but at the same time create incredible spaces for experimenting true living, true happiness.
I did not know you when you were going through those moments. I unfortunately was not around to comfort you. But I feel that I am here now. And, while our situations are not comparable given yours is so deep, what I do understand is the moments you lived inside of yourself trying to cover any potential emotional leakage from breaking out of you. The many attempts to cover a flask after the lid was removed from it. The incredulous reaction to finding dead ends to certain feelings, over and over again, and in turn just focusing on other things to go away.
Even if you were in love, which was not my situation during that period, I know how much it took to speak, talk, listen, advice, and just continue in silence. It is draining. It is one's heaviness. And it gets tiring. And it gets old. And no matter what, you have to know that overcoming such processes took a lot of courage and was, and time will prove you of this, the right thing to do.
I hope you realize that life is happening. Your life is happening. Your self, no matter at what age, is developing and finding ever new forms to extend itself in the world and amongst people. That process need not come to an end ever. You should not feel guilty for a single second about living and starting over. You cannot put yourself on hold for anyone because you will not reach the potential you are here to reach. You cannot put yourself in the back, because you have to live your life up front and center. The fears, the sentiments, all the confusion, is normal. And they have to rise. But they also need to give way to opportunity for new things to happen. They need to give way to fresh opportunity to live.
Seek balance. Seek peace. And continue seeking yourself. I think that is a process that never ends. Never. In Demian, Hesse spoke about walking to path to oneself. He says, in that book, that is the entire purpose of existence. That we may come here to do certain things, but that in end, every man and every woman must walk the path to him and herself to truly live. I think it is a difficult notion to understand. You can be an absolutist and simply let it all go and seize the day and dedicate yourself to that pursuit. But, it does not work like that. We walk throughout life and then we suddenly find ourselves bare, finally understanding simple sentences, occurrences, that in one way or another marked us. And the beauty of this entire idea is that no path is the same to the other. No soul works like the other. No man ending his love because of the reason you did will have a fine solution for you. Your life is unique. Your process is yours. And it is fine to face it, embrace it, and continue walking because you are not there yet.
I am glad you have given thought to all this. I cannot even fathom who you were before. And how you suffered. I just do not see those scars. Rather, I see a very light soul, a brave and intelligent human being, who lives and walks and does. All of what I have said is not because you poured things onto me. It is because I have thought about you, your life, and how you came to meet me. That is what one should do, no? Get to know people who affect your life. Get to understand them. Not take them face value but rather look at them and explore their pasts and yours with them from whatever point you find one another. That is what I have done.
You have not unloaded on anyone. People choose to be there or not. I chose to be there. And what I heard was what I wanted. If I did not, you would likely not be hearing from me as I would have thought you were superficial, uncharacteristic of the attributes I seek, and would have felt completely different about you. But that is not the case.
You are ready for a new chapter. Take baths or showers of cold water every other day. Let those baths be reminders of the new life you have on your hands. Walk out of them feeling your blood pumping and your heart beating. Feel inspired. Let all this time of grieving become something empowering. You now know yourself better than many do. More importantly, you know yourself better than you knew yourself before. That is an asset for happiness.
Walk on, dream on!
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