Over and done with

That most-bearable lightness of being

“When you really get over someone, it feels as right and healthy as a great bowel movement,” a 34-year-old man said. Nobody guffawed or said yukk. From the murmur of agreement, it was obvious that many present knew precisely the joys of a decisively well-emptied bowel as well as the relief of getting an entire person out of one’s system. Someone said it cleared the head, someone said it made your stomach feel empty and ready to receive better things, someone else said it relaxed your muscles but gave you that inner lightness…some of them were talking about the bowel thing and others were talking about the getting-over thing.

Someone else then quoted graffiti from a Nigel Rees collection: “There’s nothing as underrated as a good s**t and overrated as a bad f**k.”
Wow. Again, no one laughed; some just looked shocked; others nodded musingly as they turned that construct over in their minds.

The conversation then briefly took on an intricate gastrointestinal turn: It was generally agreed that there are two ways by which one has a great bowel movement: one, by shocking the system with some manner of purgative, and getting everything out, all at one go; and two, by consistently providing the system the right food and exercise, and regulating the digestive track to be healthy, wealthy and wise. The first way works, but depletes your digestive track of many good things – a kind of throwing out of the baby with the bath water, excuse the gross mixing of metaphors. The second way is kinder on your system, and ensures a real on-going state of digestive well-being.

It’s something like that when it comes to getting over someone too. After the split, the falling apart, the tears and genuine hurt, too many people try to quickly suck it all up and move on with a vengeance. They go in for purgative measures like plunging feverishly into work, a new rebound relationship, badmouthing the ex, throwing away all traces of his/her existence from their life, going ‘good-riddance’, recasting the old relationship as some stupid inconsequential interlude, and so on and so unconvincingly forth.

No wonder, then, that no real getting over and moving on happens. In the silence of the night, you suffer from the insidious and insistent reflux of undigested hurt. Worse, these acidic burps from the past bring home the undodgeable fact that you’re still actively mired in the old relationship; and perhaps that’s why your heart’s not really in that new job/lover/vacation/hobby/make-over. ‘Mired in the old relationship’ does not necessarily mean that you’re still in love. It means that your self-worth, even world-view, is still connected to the ex. And all the more, if the ex has been the one to call off the relationship. A neurotic and silent shadow-relationship continues to exist. It’s as if you’re running your current life and its events and people past the ex, as also tracking how the ex’s life is going. If he/she has moved on and is with someone else or seems happy (or unhappy), all of this impacts you, and causes your carefully constructed new life to pale into insignificance in an instant. And that’s when your realize with a dull thud in your heart (or whichever part of the body registers your plight), that your drastic purge measures have simply not worked.

Better, then, to get on to a systematic getting-over-someone programme. If you’re fortunate enough to have one of those better-put-together psyches, it happens quite naturally, and one day you wake up with the sure inner knowledge that the person’s really and truly passed out of your system. But most of us have to work at it.

Step 1: It’s that much-tossed-around word (entire seminars and workshops happen around this word): Forgiveness. No, not forgiving as in ‘come back, step all over me, all is forgiven’. That’s not forgiveness at all. Too many people bristle at the idea of forgiving an ex lover/spouse/parent/sibling/whoever. Because they assume that the suggestion that they forgive, is the suggestion that they ‘patch up’ and forget that anything bad happened and thereby indicate that they’re up for more abuse/misuse. Not true, though. Forgiveness is not reconciliation.

While reconciliation could and does happen only after forgiving, it does not and need not automatically follow. Forgiveness means simply dropping it. Just letting it go. It is a self-contained act, not a stepping-stone, not a capitulation, and certainly not a sign of being a wuss-needy-loser. Forgiveness magically and gently eliminates the toxic gunk of regret, anger, and vengeful thoughts from your system. And the best part is, you don’t need the ex to be around, you don’t need words or a script. Because forgiveness is not a dialogue at all. It is not even a soliloquy. It is a state. It acknowledges that some things are not to be, for reasons you may never fathom, and then it magically pulls the plug on the past, and neutralizes all that acid. It frees up mind-body space for some real loving.
There are no Steps 2, 3, 4… Get Step 1 right, and that’s it. Guaranteed to give you that well-moved-bowel lightness of being.

GOURI DANGE
(THE WRITER IS A PRACTISING FAMILY COUNSELLOR WITH HEALTHY BOWELS)