Good Grief: Pass the Closure

“I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an  evil.”

-J. R. R. Tolkien

I'm going to start this out by reminding you all that I am not a therapist, and as always, my blogs are based on my experiences unless otherwise mentioned. There, now that that's out of the way, let's dive right in to this one. I want to talk a little bit about the often discussed "5 Stages of Grief," and how I think they apply to the ending of a relationship. Although, it's me so you know I'm going to mix it up a bit, because let's be honest, I'm far from conventional. Also bare in mind that these stages I'm about to discuss are not necessarily in a particular order and they might vary due to the severity of the damage that has been done. 

The "It's Not Over until I Say it's Over" Stage

This stage can be a doozy if the breakup isn't mutual. You know exactly what I'm talking about, that ever-blinding ray of hope is shining so brightly in your eyes you allow your mind to continue fantasizing about things eventually working out. (It Won't). During this stage is the time where you look at old pictures and focus solely on every good memory and block out all of the negative ones. Your ex suddenly morphs into Mr/Mrs Perfect-in-Every Way. (They Aren't). This is also the stage where your friends and family will try and comfort you, give you advice, and tell you that you are too good for Mr/Mrs P. (They're Right). However, although you will hear them, it's too early for you to listen and believe them. That's ok. The length of time in this phase is likely correlated to the length of the relationship. If you're currently in this phase and reading this post consider this my warning message: Move On Immediately. (See I'm not your friend so I can get away with that shit-You're Welcome). 

The "Pajamas/Ice Cream/Alcohol Phase

Sometimes, all three at once. (You know who you are). You want a pajama day? I'll allow it. When it turns into a pajama week, we have a problem. I don't care how cute your pajamas are, you don't have any business wearing them for more than 24 hours in a row. I know I sound like a heartless bitch, I swear I'm not. (Unless you ask my ex-husband.) I am just simply telling you what I wish I would've known a decade ago. Ice cream is allowed upon necessity as long as you SWEAR to only buy one carton at a time. Frank at the supermarket check out should at least have the privilege of being mildly curious when he asks how you are. If your cart is filled with vodka, Ben & Jerry's, Snickers, Cheetos, all flavors of Milano cookies, and more vodka, you're going to give yourself away. Poor Frank. While I'm at it, about that vodka.... You have a few more phases to go before you're allowed vodka, wine, rum....I think you see where I'm going with this. (Now I'm a heartless bitch). Let me tell you the obvious reasons why. 

1. Drunk Texts

2. Drunk Phone Calls

3. Drunk "Selfies" (those will come back to bite you in the ass worse than a hangover).

4. More Drunk Texting

5. Every emotion known to man is MAGNIFIED by alcohol. (One minute you're a healthy level of sad, the next minute you're Rose in your bathtub sobbing "I'll never let go Jack...I'll never let go!" (Dude. Let Go! That ship sunk.) 

There is also one more prevalent activity that arises during this phase. Facebook Stalking (or Falking according to my best friend Kevin). This activity includes all forms of social media. This is just a part of our masochistic nature. Why we do it I'll never know, but I'll be the first to tell you I couldn't WAIT to see what my replacement looked like. (No Comment.) I want you to think about something for a minute: What good does it do you to see your Ex (Now Mr/Mrs not-so-P) happily surviving without you. (They are, if not immediately it's inevitable). Stop the insanity. Remove/block/unfriend/unfollow them in every way society allows. If you haven't already, stop reading this and do it now while you're all fired up! Delete their number AND yes the ENTIRE textersation still lingering on your mobile device. (I just called you out!) I am begging you with every ounce of my being-STOP THE MADNESS! One last thing about this, don't recruit people to do your stalking for you, that's cheating, and it makes them feel uncomfortable. (Consider this my official apology.) Thankfully this phase is also temporary and the length of time spent here is something you have a great deal of control over. Hurt is unavoidable, suffering isn't. 

The "I'm Fine" Stage

I like to call this one delusional closure or "I think I'm ready to hit up the singles bars" stage. I'm sorry precious, you're not quite there yet. Still too soon for those miniskirts and martinis ladies, or for you guys, any alcohol and Affliction t-shirts. (Those should probably be left in 2012 anyway-again, you're welcome). It's in this stage where suddenly you're beginning to realize how awesome you are but you still don't know what you deserve. It's too fragile of state to risk slip ups. Doing too much too soon can lead to being knocked on your ass. (I have bruises to prove it.) It's here where it's ever so important that you keep yourself surrounded with positive people. Find new hobbies and further develop your old ones. Run. Holy freakin crap if I could tell you to do one thing in this phase it's run! Running teaches us that our body is capable of more than our mind thinks is possible. I don't care if you've never run a day in your life-do it! Make a killer playlist, put in some headphones and pound the pavement. Developing this habit now will help you with the next stage....and you're going to need it. (Obviously if a doctor has advised you not to run then don't be a fool-walking works too, just walk fast.)  I can't tell you how long you will be in this stage, and sometimes I find this one comes around more than once usually in between the other stages. Just hang in there, I swear it gets better. (Would I lie?)

The "What Did Your Pillow Ever Do to You" Stage

This is the welcomed stage where Mr/Mrs P becomes Mr/Mrs POS. (You know that was good!) This is also the stage where songs like "Since you've been gone," "Fighter," and "Survivor," end up on your Spotify playlist. (See also, "You'll Think of Me," "Someone Like You," and my FAVORITE: drumroll please- "You Oughta Know." I'm a chick-what did you expect?!) I will be the first to tell you getting mad is good. (Can you guess what stage I'm in? Ha!) Again-I can't say this enough, you must still avoid the alcohol. Besides, you've come so far, no need to back track now! So let it out! Talk a healthy amount of crap with your friends, punch your pillow, scream at inconsiderate drivers on the freeway, (hehe), take a kickboxing class, and then punch your pillow some more. (Aren't you glad you're a runner now? Run it out.) This is the stage when you are reminded of all the shitty things Mr/Mrs POS did wrong throughout your relationship AND just how poorly you were treated at the end. Do your best to keep your anger contained to a level just below insanity or your likely to unleash a monster on your unprepared family members during Thanksgiving clean up. (Who would do such a thing?! What a psycho.) Remember that while it's completely normal to be angry, your family, friends, and co-workers didn't break up with you, the POS did, so don't take it out on them. So here's my best advice for this stage: Be angry with integrity. If you want to burn pictures/property, I can't support that because it's not my style. Remember you're actions are a reflection of you. You're the good guy in this story remember? Don't do villainous things you may or may not regret later. So to sum it up-Anger is healthy, evilness is not. Know the difference. Just don't stay here too long. Anger is an ugly color on everyone. 

The "Bring out the Booze" Phase

Also known as "acceptance." Cheers. You're over the hump and ready to get back out there! Mr/Mrs POS has morphed into Mr/Mrs Thing of the Past. Honestly, I don't think this stage means you don't occasionally reflect on your past relationship and feel "something." If your relationship had any level of longevity, in some ways that person will always be a part of you. That's just a part of life. Difficult experiences change and grow us into new and better versions of ourselves. Look at you Superstar! You survived! (I knew you would.) Break ups are one of the crappiest things we can go through. Hurt happens. Tears fall. Feathers fly. (Santa bring me a new pillow for Christmas?) When all is said and done, hearts heal, scars and all. This is a progressive stage, you will continue to move on more and more with the passing of time. Trust me, the day isn't far away where you will be able to listen to "your song" when it comes on the radio and you won't tear up, you'll be able to quote lines from your favorite movie and it won't make you cringe, and when someone mentions their name you won't need to replace all the pillows in your home. (I needed to redecorate anyway....riiiiiight.)


Unfortunately we live in a world where people just don't stay together anymore. That is a very sad thing but very much reality. In closing, I just want to reiterate something that has really helped me over and over again. (This is not my first rodeo ya'll.) Right after my divorce I was having a heart to heart with another single mom I really looked up to and her advice to me was burned into my very being. She said four little words to me that changed how I operate in almost every area of my life. She said, "Always act with integrity." Now at the time she was specifically referring to how I should handle a very angry, and bitter ex-husband, but I always strive to be that way in every relationship I have had. Let me tell you, I have had a couple guys do some pretty despicable things to me, they all received their belongings back the same way, washed, folded, and in one piece. For me, that's what feels right. Matter of fact you can ask my friends just how important this is to me and they will likely all think of the same story. I think I'll tell you for fun. One of the more recent relationships I was in involved my ex being here so frequently that he was allotted half of my closet. Long story short, I was under the influence when I found out about an infidelity. My influenced self proceeded to march to the closet and grab all of his clothes and throw them on the balcony. (A few even went right over, but don't worry, my neighbors were nice enough to hang them on my stairs. Humiliated much?) The night turned into a sleep over with several friends really being there for me. However no one was prepared for me to wake up, feeling sick for one thing, and I had a vague recollection of the throwing of the clothes. At 5am I carried all of the clothes back inside, and a day or two later they were all washed and folded. I don't know what a therapist would have to say about this behavior, but for me, it's just what feels right. It's immeasurably important for me to be able to look myself in the mirror and be ok with my actions. Frankly, our actions are the ONLY thing about a break up we can control! 

The reason I am able to tell you what to do and what not to do is because I have done it the hard way so many times. Seriously, my heart is still shaking it's little heart head after the last one. (Forgive me heart, I'm endlessly sorry.) Obviously, you may think I'm full of complete crap and try your luck with some Jack Daniels in the Pajama Stage. More power to you, but I'm not wrong about this. I'm just not. With all my heart I wish I could reach through this screen and hug you and make your hurt go away. I really, truly do. Hurt can be so debilitating, believe me my darlings, I know. I can't fast forward you through this process (although that would be a hell of an invention!)  or I would. It has to run it's course and it will. You absolutely will survive this if you make up your mind to do it! Be your own hero! Place your focus where it belongs, the future, not the past. Stop drowning in despair and surf the waves! I don't want to drag this out much longer because it can be so much to take in all at once, but I want to close with one last thing, but I want you to really be ready for it. Take a deep breath, center, find your zen, whatever....ready? 

You are going to be ok. Again. You are going to be OK! Last time: YOU ARE GOING TO BE OK! Get it? This hurts. This sucks. But, it's not forever, and someday my friends, you absolutely are going to be ok. In fact, you will be more than ok, you will be AMAZING! Now....who wants ice cream?

*Find me on Facebook JFox Tales*

If it's Not Broke Part 2

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” 

― Khalil Gibran

   So, now what? Only a few days ago your life made perfect sense and now your insides are void of positive human emotions and your freezer is full of ice cream. Oh and to make matters worse, your heart has begun a full fledged game of the "What If's?" What if I could go back and make things a little easier? What if I had started working out? What if I had tried harder to please him/her? You think Cher is the only person that's ever wanted to turn back time? Not likely. My bruised/broken heart is the what if master! The worst part is when you pitch a tent in Denialville actually believing there is something you can undo. Holy shit we torture ourselves don't we?! For the purpose of what? Hope. The relationships that I fought for the hardest killed me the most because they dragged out so long. Why? Hope. When I walked away from my second marriage my heart hurt for my children, but it didn't break from the loss of the relationship, simply because for me, at the point we had arrived at, there was no more hope. We can't help but play what if when the person leaves us with a glimmer of hope, even if it's manifested in our own minds. That's the worst kind, false hope.
       
     Having hope is just a way of self-protecting. If we grant ourselves even the smallest glimmer of hope we prevent ourselves from having to completely absorb the hurt from the new break or bruise. In other words, we are just delaying the inevitable. What we don't realize is we are torturing ourselves just as much but putting ourselves through this false reality and battling with our own feelings of rejection. All these things are just human nature.

    With that being said, how do we speed up the process? You're not going to like it as much as I hate admitting it. You learn to let go, accept the heartache, absorb the pain and disappointment, and move forward. Now I don't expect miracles, so I say allowing yourself 24-72 of crying in the shower and consuming ridiculous amounts of Ben and Jerry's is acceptable. Avoid alcohol during the first few days, I shouldn't even have to give you all the reasons why. Take Foolish Games, Baby Come Back, and You'll Think of Me off of your playlist and add some upbeat motivating music. My playlist always varies as my taste changes but it has always had Stronger by Britney Spears, start there if you're lost for ideas. (Yes, I said Britney bitch).  Next, stop starting at your phone waiting for a text or phone call to fix it all, guess what, it's not coming. Get moving! Preferably outdoors, walk, run, jog, ride, something somewhere...

     You want the good news or the bad news? Well, you're getting both. The bad news is this probably isn't the last time you or I will hurt like this, that would be too easy. The good news is it gets better. Thoughts of taking your toaster in the bath will soon change into plans to better yourself. How do I know this? I have been used, abused, bruised and broken and some of the best things in my life have come out of these situations. Goals seem attainable, dreams seem just close enough to reach, and creativity has no limits. People tell me so often that I am the strongest person they've ever met and most of them know less than half of what I've been through. You know what? I laugh to myself when they tell me that, simply because very few see me at my low moments. What they see is when I wake up and realize life goes on.

      What I know is this, bad things will continue to happen, but so will good things. This is life. Roll with it. Accept it. Somehow, learn to embrace it. There will be moments when the world will seem very black and white, but don't close your eyes before the color returns, and it always does. I promise this Dorothy has always found her way back to OZ.

To Be Continued....(likely infinitely)

      

Wants v. Needs; Winning Disguised as Losing

"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
-Oscar Wilde

Before you begin, read that quote again and really think about it. I'll come back to it at the end.

In the times we live in wants and needs have largely become defined as one in the same. The majority of Americans have become so spoiled by modern conveniences that we no longer want, we need. I am guilty of these feelings myself. Tomorrow is Monday morning and my first thought will likely be, "I need coffee." Do I need coffee? No, I would continue living and breathing without coffee, but I want coffee because it's delicious and takes the edge off. You see my point? Of course you do. Most would agree there are three basic, acceptable "needs," food, clothing, and shelter. I feel that there is a wild card that occasionally gets mentioned in songs etc, the fourth human need is love. (And there are at least four people that think all you need is love.) This is the need that's on my mind now, and the effect that it has on our choices. Now, this want v. need theory isn't quite the same in regards to relationships. In relationships, I believe, there are wants and needs, and confusing the two can really screw things up.

I'm going to take it a step farther and tell you a little bit about my journey and explain how wants disguised as needs can really send you down a rocky road. (Not the delicious kind either.) The stories I am about to share are all true, and some of them have taken me over a decade to talk about. I don't need to start at the very beginning because I don't feel it has too much impact on the topic. It's almost ironic because up until this year I could count the people that knew about what happened to me on one hand. My heartbreak I mentioned in the previous blog forced me to do a lot of soul searching and I started putting pieces together and eventually realized that one night really started it all.

When I was 18 years old I was on a work trip with many people my age and early twenties. The week before this trip, my boyfriend at the time cheated on me, and I found out from someone else. My heart was bruised (though I thought broken,) and I couldn't wait to get away. The company put us up in a hotel and we worked all day and then partied at night. I had never really experienced much of the party scene up until this point and was inexperienced with drugs and alcohol. How exactly it happened I'm not entirely sure, but one minute I was in a room with about 10 people drinking and smoking and the next minute I was sitting on a bed immobile and drunk. Next thing I knew, it happened. Everyone had left the room but one guy, and that night he took from me something no one should ever take. The worst part was, I was conscious enough to remember it all, including the sound of my voice sobbing and begging him to stop. I told no one. Afraid for my job, afraid to get in trouble for drinking and being underage, and ashamed. That night my views on sex and love had changed. Sex wasn't special, it was just sex, and sometimes even a chore, and love, well, love was something I didn't think existed anyway. I left that trip a cold, tainted, negative person with my first tattoo I had drawn the night after it happened, a shattered and broken heart with flames coming out.

Now here's the part where things got messy. Most of my understanding has been very recent, when I did the things I did, they were not intentional, I was going through the motions. Despite my lack of belief in love, it is one of the human needs so obviously I longed for it. However, now a relationship required more than just love. I not only needed love, but the next guy I dated had to make me feel safe, because you see, a part of me was extremely traumatized and I was almost afraid of men sometimes. I also wanted to be with someone that I knew wouldn't cheat on me, the only way to ensure that (if there even is such a thing) was to date down. Please remember I didn't know what I was doing at the time, hindsight really is 20/20. Shortly after returning home I began dating one of my managers that I knew was into me. He was over 6 ft tall, and just under 300 pounds, and came fully equipped with a closet full of Raiders jerseys. Very few men would be able to hurt me if I was with him, and at the time I was a cute little blue eyed, light brown haired, outgoing girl with a winning sense of humor...ha.

Fast forward 3 years, one break up, one make up and we got married. Fast forward another 5 months and my stuff was packed and I left with only what I could fit in my Civic while he was at work. So what happened? Why didn't I figure out I couldn't be with him before I married him? If he was what I wanted why didn't it work out? All of that back story was just to get to these questions, so I could tell you the answers, and why I believe so many people have long term relationships that initially seem so good and one day you feel like you are going to go completely bonkers if you pick up one more Q tip that he just can't seem to make into the trash can!

We need love, all of us. The trouble comes when we start to add stipulations to it that aren't permanent. How each of us shows and receives love is a little different. (Please read the 5 Love Languages for more information on this.) Here's what I'm trying to say, Husband #1 loved me, and I loved things about him. Did you catch that? The simple fact that I knew he loved me is what dragged our story out for so long. However, my needs for dating him in the first place lost value over time. Eventually I didn't believe every guy in Target was plotting to rape me in the garden department, and I had been comfortable living in the land of fidelity for almost 3 years. My "needs" changed. More accurately, my need was still love, a mutual love, but my wants changed. When those two things weren't a priority, it opened my eyes to all of the things he was doing to me or ways he was treating me that were wrong. In other words, I saw the relationship for what it really was, and the sad truth was my wants were being met, but my needs weren't. Had I figured this out then, it would have spared me a second divorce. Sadly, I repeated the process, but this time with different wants, which eventually lost value again.

So, how did I figure this out? By falling in love with someone when I didn't want anything. I was tapped out, dried up, all I needed was love. As time went on, I had the best relationship of my life. The bright side to all this heartache was without it, I wouldn't have been able to really know what I needed. I could sit here and list the things about my relationship that made it the best, but they are going to be unique to me. In order for you to have a successful relationship, you are going to have to sort through your own list of wants and needs, and be honest with yourself. If I wouldn't have found this special person, I don't know if I could have done that, because in some ways, I didn't know my needs until he kept meeting them. My theory behind that is I didn't know my needs, because I had a decade old secret, and every day after that I lost a little more of who I was, until on some level I didn't even know myself. I have learned more about myself in the past three months than I have my whole life.

The best advice I can give on how to figure all this out is:
Regardless of your current relationship status, write down 5-10 things that you feel you need out of a relationship. These can be qualities in a partners, mutual hobbies, emotional compatibility, etc. Don't think about it too much, just write the first things that come to your mind because those are likely the most important and likely honest. If you have more than 10 that's good! You know what you want, you're already ahead of most of us. Now one by one, go down your list focusing on each item and ask yourself if this was gone from my relationship in 5 years, but I still loved the person would I still be happy. The ones where you can answer yes, those are your wants. If you say no to any of those things then that becomes a need. Things that shouldn't be compromised or forgotten about. I'll give you an example of one of each for me to give you an idea.
Want-I want my partner to love the outdoors as much as I do.
Need-I need my partner to be my best friend.
It would be ideal if my partner liked to go to the mountains, the beach, and just be outdoors with me. However, if he only came along once and awhile I could live with that. Until my recent relationship I had never dated a guy that I felt was my best friend. This is one of the things I was telling you about that I wouldn't have known was a need without having it. I would not be happy in a relationship unless I felt that way, and that is something I am unwilling to compromise on.

This was a long one, but hopefully you learned something. Now if you remember the quote I began with, hopefully after reading this you can come up with an example or two of your own when getting what you wanted wasn't necessarily the best thing. My life has been filled with moments like that. I'd get an idea in my head and I'd fight for it throwing caution and rationality to the wind. The good news is now I'm aware of it, now I take a good look at each situation before jumping in blindly. It's a conscious effort, and I still screw it up, but I screw up a lot less than I did 5 or even 10 years ago. There's hope for us yet! My thought is that if I can help even just one person do things better than I did than it wasn't all for nothing. Part 2 of  "If it's not Broke..." coming soon. Hope you all have a great week!

If it's Not Broke.... Pt 1

"Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't." -Stephen King from "Heart in Atlantis"

or

"Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable." -Wizard of Oz

If heart breaks were uncommon they wouldn't be mentioned so frequently. From music, to poems, to novels, movies, TV shows, the list is endless and it is the one disease that every human suffers from at least once in their lifetime. This is a topic that will undoubtedly come up again and again, but for now I have a few thoughts on the matter.

First of all, sadly, some of you reading this are already recollecting your assumed heart breaks and commiserating along with me. At the ripe old age of 30 I have recently discovered that if you asked me at 29 how many heart breaks I had experienced, I would have thrown out a number somewhere between 10-15. Ask me today and I'll tell you my heart has truthfully been broken only once. The other assumed heart breaks I had experienced were nothing more than what I would refer to today as heart bumps and bruises. Allow me to explain: any time you make yourself vulnerable in the love department, and that relationship ends, whether mutually or by the element of surprise (i.e., "This isn't working out, it's not you it's me," "Umm, honey, who's lipstick is this on your shirt?" or my favorite, "I hate to do this to you after all this time, but I really need to do the right thing and stop screwing you on the side." Let me tell you, there are few things worse than finding out you are the side salad when you assumed you were the best damn filet that fool could get. At 18 I had deemed my heart broken so badly that I have a tattoo to show for it. Even that time was nothing more than my heart getting a TKO in one round with Muhammad Ali, bruised but not broken.

Ok, so now you are probably wondering, what is my definition of a heart break then? I think true heart break varies by person for sure. In my heart bruises, I cried for days, felt sick, thought I would never get over it, either ate or starved my feelings, wanted to disappear, tortured myself with pictures, had nightmares, and even tried fixing the situations out of desperation. (Hindsight has left me SO grateful I didn't have success mending any of those prior situations, ha.) The list goes on, the majority of which were all eventually healed with the help of friends, family, time, and Ben and Jerry. My heartbreak had all of those same symptoms, but there were some variations and certainly some additions, the first one being simply this, at a point in my life where I truly believed I had everything to live for and so much going for me, I wanted to die. The quote I began with by Stephen King really hit home when I read it a month or two after the Break. Let me be clear, I wasn't suicidal, it wasn't a desire to die in a literal sense at all actually. I was in such severe pain, physically, emotionally, and in every other way possible, that I just lost all desire for life. My world was rocked., no other way to describe it. It was like I was Dorothy starting out in Oz and got abruptly teleported to Kansas and suddenly my beautiful world was lacking color and a twister was headed straight for me. If you are one of the people who have experienced something like this then you know exactly what I'm talking about. It took about a week before I could even think or process normal thoughts, and one of the first things I realized was exactly what I'm telling you now, every other heartbreak was just a heartbruise in disguise. It was like a tragic epiphany! "Holy shattered dreams Batman! My heart was still completely in tact until now! Ka Baaaam!"

To Be Continued......