There's a song by Akron/Family that I've been listening to everyday for about a week now. The lyrics go "Don't be afraid, it's only love. Don't be afraid, it's only love. Love is simple."
LOVE IS F*CKING SIMPLE.
But it sure ain't easy. And you know why it's not easy? Because we make it harder on ourselves than it has to be. We take something beautiful and we piss all over it. I'm about 85% sure Thich Nhat Hanh said that.
If you're anything like me, you have a giant ego to go along with your giant heart and your incredible fashion sense.
And our ego complicates the sh*t out of our love lives. Egos can't stand to be ignored. They love scheming and plotting and scandal. Worst of all, they'll do anything, and I mean anything to look good.
Our egos are little Blair Waldorfs running amok on the Upper East Side of our personalities. If you have no idea what that means, a) start watching Gossip Girl and b) it doesn't matter, you get the idea.
LUCKILY, THERE'S A SECRET TO LASTING LOVE, OR AT LEAST TO LOVE LASTING MORE THAN A WEEK:
5 NO-NONSENSE WAYS, TO SEND YOUR EX PACKING FOR GOOD.
Ok, so you just got dumped. It was awful. You looked down at your phone and there it was, a text from your now ex saying something like “it's over baby, xoxo Gossip Girl.”
Or it was even worse and your partner said they “loved you, but they weren’t in love with you." Yeah right.
Or get ready for this: they died. Yep, that happens.
It really doesn’t matter if your break-up was with your love of 50 years or with that dude from OKCupid who looks just like Anderson Cooper and decided to stop emailing you. Or even if it was with the cutie who works at Gap, who you’re not exactly dating, but you could be...
Getting over a broken heart is hard. Maybe one of the hardest things in the world.
SHIT HAPPENS.
People leave us, we flunk out of college, our iPhones get stolen, our grandmothers die. Loss is a matter of fact for everyone walking this earth, and we each have our own unique and understandable emotional response. Grief is a natural reaction to the feeling that something or someone we treasure has been taken away from us. The grieving process includes a variety of coping strategies including denial, isolation, anger, bargaining, or depression. I'd like to add my personal favorites: righteous indignation, moving to a new town, or getting a morbid tattoo. The thing to remember, however, is that grief does not take orders from our brains!
YOU CAN'T HURRY LOVE, AND YOU CAN'T HURRY GRIEF.
It takes time to heal. Sometimes weeks, sometimes months, and sometimes if you're very unlucky, longer than The Final Rose Episode of The Bachelorette. But regardless of the time frame, remember to be patient and kind with yourself, and to let your process unfold naturally.
