art of letting go: on closure and moving on

the frustrated joe d’ mango that i am, i have always harbored the thought of someday doing such stuff, writing advices for letter senders.

but hey, i got something closer than what i previously thought impossible. i turn to blogging.

this means will allow me to dispense my take on certain things without hitting on one person directly. it's like my way of sharing how i feel for certain life topics without being so to-your-face since i don't have somebody specific in mind.


step one

as a step forward in this endeavor, i will start with the art of letting go. this, as i know it, is a music album title. with songs contained bearing music for the broken hearted. now, do i have to confirm with a record bar still if this album flew off the shelves? no brainer it did. pinoys, at most, buy these genre for we are a nation of suckers for romance. i don't think we are known to be a race of emotional hard balls. there is always, in each one of us, that soft spot for crying over spoiled relationships. unless you have a friend in my former boss, michelle d., you will be reading this. [why i said that? she told me that whenever she has a friend going through the motions of mending a broken heart, she would lend a Trance CD. for if it'd be a mushy one, the person wouldn't get over it. with Trance, there is no lyrics or anything, one has no reason to sulk and linger. hahahaha]

how does one let go really? i guess, there is no cut and dried way to go about it. that makes it easy and hard at the same time, right? it means, we are the ones responsible for creating the shortcut menu for going on with our lives. but others wouldn't take it this way, rather, what they want is for other people to sort it out for them. at first, that's ok. these people would be the ones waking us in our unholy hours just because they feel like crying again. again that is fine. but what if they feel like doing that 24/7 for half a year?

i guess, what really makes it so hard is the fact that we don't want to confront the reality of a person we loved so darn hard is just letting go of us that EASILY. be it on pride, loss, immaturity, possessiveness, love or any combination and permutation thereabouts, the fact that somebody walked out on us is hurting, of course, and overwhelming.

we can never be prepared for such. whoever goes into a relationship thinking on the first day that "i must prepare for the day we break up" is either looney or simply pathetic or not in love at all. i mean, we always think of going through love hoping it would be endless.

the gravity of loss would now be dependent on how well-built we are, empirically, in facing such situations. factors could be, how many times we have faced such realities, our age [both maturity and chronological], our environment [where we grew up], our support group, our faith [this is disputable. i don't necessarily mean religion. it is our relationship with a higher being or for non-believers, on our disposition].


what is closure?

personally, what i find close to home is closure [gosh, using the same root word in 1 sentence]. what i find hard to accept when i was so mercilessly immersed in such lachrymal-ly overworking reality is closure. i am one person who wants one final talk before letting go. i can't comprehend that people who have loved one another would just completely ignore such relationship as if it was totally non-existent. same to annulment, right?

my version would have been, that that person would sit it out with me and discuss what has happened and be totally adults with our failures. and not just cold shoulder-ing me every time we meet and try, at the very least, to meet with me and talk things out [as opposed to talk things over; for this means, resolving the problem to resolution. with the 2 of you getting back on again]

i guess, the main propel for me to have closure is to hear it first-hand "where did i go wrong?" [that song totally captured it]. not so much on defending your lot but more on looking straight to your lover's [be it your friend, relatives etc] eyes and getting it cold. and more so, you dishing out your sentiments straightforward. spewing it out loud what you have to say.

maybe it's more about us telling them. the mere fact we want closure, the reason hedges closer to our benefit. the lack of images for us to imagine how our partner would have reacted on what we have to say may be the bulk of the reason why closure is needed. like for me, i would have relished seeing the face of that person register shock, or guilt, or realization on the things i have listed in my mind and pored over countless times ever since the walk out.


what is moving on?

can anybody be ever be definite and descriptive on this subject, moving on? we all take into things differently, more so, on how we feel certain things. we are relative in how we accept things right? and this status of acceptance defines, as i see it, how we are moving on or if, ever, we have moved on.

there are people who have claimed that they are past certain relationships but upon probing you find out that, they are, as claimed, only because they haven't seen the other person after the break up. i don't lay claim that we need to see the other person just to make sure that we have moved on. what there is, is that most times, distance did its thing for us. we have healed on most parts because we have lost contact. now, what do you think would have happened if we keep on bumping into that person every day? would it in fact have more bearing if we were able to resist reconciliation given such frequent encounters or is it in equality with another person who has moved on unbound by such close distance.

honestly, i don't know the answer.

that is why moving on for me is quite indescribable, unless we really know the person concerned.

others would say that if it's not distance, then it must be time. years upon years after would have dulled us from the pain of a failed relationship. yet, similar to above, time is also distance expressed in minutes and hours. it is likewise presumptuous to claim that we are past hurt if we counted years already. for feelings know no space nor time. and if we have just covered up our emotions with things to get ourselves busy with, without confronting what needs to be addressed, then we are only buying, yes, time.

we are just making ourselves believe that in so doing, we can go on with our lives without facing what has come out from the relationship.

i speak for my self, but i think, whatever emotions we go through in life have meanings. we don't necessarily have to go about them one by one, every day, but when we feel strongly about a certain emotion, about a certain person, in most waking hours, then it needs attention.

haven't you yourself endure the pangs of nagging feelings? when you feel like, you don't want it anymore? how come you always feel sorry for yourself, that you don't deserve feeling that way, or how come the other person CAN'T feel the same misery that you are in?

only we can answer that. for no amount of explanation will suffice for somebody whose questions are unaccountable to any other but one's self. only we have that key to finding out what we needs to be resolved. we can count on people, friends, our family to help us sort some things, but not decide on ALL things.

therefore, we need not rush things to resolution. if the reason why we just want closure is so that we can have it done and over it, then we fail to realize why we encountered failure, and why we need to go on. things do take time in some cases to figure itself out. there are many moments in life we don’t fathom the reason why it’s happening, and foremost, why us. rushing ourselves, and even forcing the other party to provide us reasons for their decisions don’t add up to resolution.

find that within you, it will not be easy, it will never be easy. but life never promised to be easy on us. that makes life and all needed decisions a mystery to unravel, and not to be solved.