Ok, I'll admit it.
The first few weeks after a break-up (even if I initiated it and was the first to find the closest ex-it), I shouldn't be around anyone.
I'm not fit for human consumption.
All I can think about is him.
The good, the bad, the ugly, what he did, what he didn't do, what I should have done, and what I wish I hadn't...
namely him.
This too shall pass, I tell myself.
And it typically does.
The good news about getting older is that we can logically convince ourselves that another one will come along, that we will eventually heal and forgive, and we will probably even forget.
But, in the meantime, I must perform the ritual.
I must obsess, cry, hide, rant, and annoy the hell out of my friends (and maybe even lose a few) while I try to ex-orcise this demon of love from my life.
When I was younger, I used to think that I would never meet anyone like him whoever he was at the time, that I had lost my last and only chance at love, even though many had preceded this one.
And I would lose ten pounds.
I would put myself on the break-a-habit-in-21- days detox program and forbid myself contact with him.
I wrote every bad thing that I could think of about him on a 3 x 5 card and carried it around with me so that I could hate him from wherever I was.
I had his number on my personal "Do Not Call" registry and if he called, I pulled out my index card for backup.
I put sticky notes on my bathroom mirrors and on all of my phones.
Like a recovering alcoholic, I had someone designated to call, even if I had to wake them up in the middle of the night if I had the urge to pick up the phone and call him.
I would tell myself that I just needed to make it through three lousy weeks.
I would light a bonfire in my Weber barbecue and burn photos, letters, and anything else that would light.
I tried to sleep (perchance to dream), but instead I would end up having nightmares about him.
Every song, every box of cereal, and every conversation would remind me of something about the relationship.
I would fantasize about him not being able to live without me (again, even if I initiated the break-up.
Don't ask me why.
) "If he could only hurt half as much as I do," I would say.
Nice to know I still had some compassion in my aching heart.
And one day, magic happened.
I would wake up and something would be missing from my life.
Him (and the pain.
) No more pain, no more hate.
Hmmm.
Day twenty-two too.
Go figure.
(Does this really work?) I would imagine his face and nothing.
I would imagine him with another woman and nothing.
No affect at all.
The agony had passed and was replaced by ex-stacy.
I could think of him and even still care, but the pain was gone.
What I had heard was true.
The opposite of love wasn't hate.
It was apathy.
Be careful what you wish for too.
Once, when I wished he would hurt half as much as I did (and after I was well into the getting-over-him stage and had met someone new), he came back.
He was hurting, and probably more than half as much as I had.
I thought it would feel good to have the tables turn, but it didn't.
Watching someone else hurt really isn't revenge, or at least it wasn't for me.
The nice thing about pain is that we seem to forget how much it hurt after it passes (kind of like childbirth which is why there are so many people around) and until we do something stupid again like not pay attention to that 24-hour rule where people tell you who they are early on and we have to re-implement the 21-day-detox program.
If I am really feeling desperate and the above mentioned process isn't working as fast as I need it to, I practice projection.
No, not seeing all of my own flaws in my partner kind of projection and not the astral kind, but a type of energy projection where I close my eyes and pretend I'm waking up the day before or after I met him.
And I remind myself that I didn't even know that this person existed on the planet.
It kind of takes the edge off and the charge out of it.
The last part of the exercise is imagining myself way past the heartbreak, like six months down the line when I know that I'll be having a Mojito and feeling good again.
Seriously, it works.
So now I know this stuff and I know it well.
I know what I have to do when a relationship ends.
It's my thing and my due diligence, I guess, and I don't think I'm the only woman who has a ritual.
Men, on the other hand, seem to have a secret way of dealing with break-ups like drinking (more than one Mojito), stuffing it, other women (or stuffing other women with it), and work, that is until one of us makes a voodoo wish and they come running back with hat and heart in hand.
No matter how tempting it might be, never, ever ex-hume the ex, which means take the ex out of sex, or out of you.
Trust me.
You'll just have to start all over, buy more sticky notes and index cards, waste more valuable time, and lose more friends and maybe ten pounds in the process, which might not be a bad thing.