A REALLY brief note from Ariel: I met MJ when he first started dating one of my besties, Kristen. I had gotten to know a little bit of his writing through his film reviews, and I'm really grateful that he's joined the conversation of relationships and how they work (and don't) on this blog. Without further ado-!
"Name me something you've started that you've ever finished!" I guess she was right. I mean, I wasn't the one currently finishing our relationship. She was talking about my plan for school. I was never very dedicated to academia and she always was. It was the night before I began my ?th year of junior college and the twilight hours of a bummer of a weekend that began with being swindled on Craigslist and ended with a break-up. Not exactly a series of events for the scrapbook.
It was the second time we had been through this. If you haven't read Micaela Berry's excellent post about the dangers of will they won't they and idealizing a person, I suggest you do so. We were in the same situation except that we actually dated and quickly realized that we were in love with the thought of the other person rather than the person. So we did what any rational human being would do and began a year and a half of on-again off-again long distance dating. You know, like how healthy relationships are.
But that's not why you're here. You're here to read about that post-relationship emotional residue. The icky bits left over when two people unstick themselves from each other. I've always been okay at handling break-ups. I give myself a grief timeline. Taking a cue from multiplatinum recording artists Barenaked Ladies (BNL for those in the know), it's usually about one week. One week is sufficient time to grieve, watch all the movies, buy all the useless things with the extra money you have and generally figure out the next steps. Taking those steps is a matter of time, but setting up goals at this point is what you want to do.
So it had been one week since she looked at me (see what I did there?) and something curious had happened. I wasn't over it. While she was absent from my life, her fingerprints were seemingly all over it. It was a very new experience for me and I didn't know how to handle it. So I did the healthy thing and decided to power through my next few semesters of junior college and then transfer to an online film school to finish up my degree. Pretty good, right? It's good to have a degree and be dedicated to your studies. Yes, but, motivation is key here. Instead of pursuing my goal to better my life and attain my dream job I was doing all of this to not let her "win." It was all to prove her wrong over something she had told me in an extremely emotional moment that I had taken far too seriously. I ended up with some of the best grades I had ever received that semester and it only cost me my identity. It was all wrapped up in proving her wrong and not pursuing things that edify my life.
I entered winter break smugly thinking "That showed her!" and began working 12 hour shifts by myself 6-days a week. And then I got WEIRD. I began stewing over how much I was winning and let the spite overtake me. I would see my friends and have no idea how to interact with them because I wasn't used to being around people.
Things slowed down around the new year and the emotional whiplash set-in. I realized that I had become a version of myself that I hated. At one point, this woman had been one of my closest friends and I now found myself hoping she was doing poorly.
Spring semester rolled around, the emotional gunk had dissipated, and my generally terrible academic track record was back. I lost my motivation for school 3/4ths of the way through, dropped all my classes, and haven't looked back. She was right, I probably wasn't meant to be in school. I will have an uphill battle in my career because of it, but I couldn't be happier with the way my life has turned out since distancing myself from the emotional poison I had fed myself for months. I hope the same rings true for her.
"Name me something you've started that you've ever finished!" I guess she was right. I mean, I wasn't the one currently finishing our relationship. She was talking about my plan for school. I was never very dedicated to academia and she always was. It was the night before I began my ?th year of junior college and the twilight hours of a bummer of a weekend that began with being swindled on Craigslist and ended with a break-up. Not exactly a series of events for the scrapbook.
It was the second time we had been through this. If you haven't read Micaela Berry's excellent post about the dangers of will they won't they and idealizing a person, I suggest you do so. We were in the same situation except that we actually dated and quickly realized that we were in love with the thought of the other person rather than the person. So we did what any rational human being would do and began a year and a half of on-again off-again long distance dating. You know, like how healthy relationships are.
But that's not why you're here. You're here to read about that post-relationship emotional residue. The icky bits left over when two people unstick themselves from each other. I've always been okay at handling break-ups. I give myself a grief timeline. Taking a cue from multiplatinum recording artists Barenaked Ladies (BNL for those in the know), it's usually about one week. One week is sufficient time to grieve, watch all the movies, buy all the useless things with the extra money you have and generally figure out the next steps. Taking those steps is a matter of time, but setting up goals at this point is what you want to do.
So it had been one week since she looked at me (see what I did there?) and something curious had happened. I wasn't over it. While she was absent from my life, her fingerprints were seemingly all over it. It was a very new experience for me and I didn't know how to handle it. So I did the healthy thing and decided to power through my next few semesters of junior college and then transfer to an online film school to finish up my degree. Pretty good, right? It's good to have a degree and be dedicated to your studies. Yes, but, motivation is key here. Instead of pursuing my goal to better my life and attain my dream job I was doing all of this to not let her "win." It was all to prove her wrong over something she had told me in an extremely emotional moment that I had taken far too seriously. I ended up with some of the best grades I had ever received that semester and it only cost me my identity. It was all wrapped up in proving her wrong and not pursuing things that edify my life.
I entered winter break smugly thinking "That showed her!" and began working 12 hour shifts by myself 6-days a week. And then I got WEIRD. I began stewing over how much I was winning and let the spite overtake me. I would see my friends and have no idea how to interact with them because I wasn't used to being around people.
Things slowed down around the new year and the emotional whiplash set-in. I realized that I had become a version of myself that I hated. At one point, this woman had been one of my closest friends and I now found myself hoping she was doing poorly.
Spring semester rolled around, the emotional gunk had dissipated, and my generally terrible academic track record was back. I lost my motivation for school 3/4ths of the way through, dropped all my classes, and haven't looked back. She was right, I probably wasn't meant to be in school. I will have an uphill battle in my career because of it, but I couldn't be happier with the way my life has turned out since distancing myself from the emotional poison I had fed myself for months. I hope the same rings true for her.