ok week two of my saturday blogging commitment is not going exactly according to plan, but that’s ok. in my ideal fantasy world i would have done this in the morning, but we do not live in my ideal fantasy world and it is 9pm. fine.
i did spend quite a lot of time writing other things this week, though, including this morning. i’m working on an essay about overdose prevention that may become an op-ed. we’ll see. i really like the concept i came up with and i got pretty close to making it work how i wanted to. that last sentence was a grammatical train wreck but whatever my blog, my rules.
naturally, the essay references my dead ex, so that has brought up some stuff. even before i had started writing it, i was feeling a grief flare-up for whatever reason. then today i made chana masala and it reminded me of the end of our relationship when i was so desperate for a drop of validation that i was elated when he told me my chana masala was great. so then i cried a little bit but i’m alright now. and the chana masala turned out pretty well.
in some ways, i find it comforting that i still burst into tears and crumple up on my kitchen floor from time to time. it means i still remember.
it’s also comforting that i still miss him even though i met someone new. not because i was afraid i would stop missing him, but because earlier in my grief ~*jOuRnEy*~ i wondered if i would be taking less time to “get over it” if i had some other romantic interest in my life. i thought maybe i was just missing him so intensely because i was single, which in retrospect could not be further from the truth.
i think often we are conditioned to believe that finding a partner will fix it all — your loneliness, your sadness, your heartbreak. that’s problematic enough at face value, but it also implies that loneliness, sadness, and heartbreak are things that need to be fixed. sure, we naturally run from those things because they are uncomfortable and unpleasant, but feeling those emotions is a beautiful part of the natural human experience, not a problem to be solved.
i think my point is that i am pleased to know that my mental state is just as tempestuous now as it was before i met the nice man i’m dating. i think with my ex i just so badly wanted to believe that everything was rainbows and butterflies because we were iN lOvE and that kinda backfired. i feel like i’m more grounded now, thank god. we love growth!!!!!