Panaceas

I poked around on Google today to look for some wisdom on how to recover from a broken heart.  The advice ran the gamut: go party and get wasted and sleep with tons of guys so I forget my ex!  Or get all dolled up, go out with my girlfriends, and remind myself that I'm fabulous.  Or buy this program that will guarantee I'll feel 100% better and ready to date again within a week, or for this much extra, our foolproof method will have your ex begging to come back.  I have tons of people pushing antidepressants on me or encouraging me to trash-talk K because hating is easier than hurting.  The better advice out there talks about deep breaths, yoga and meditation, baby steps, gentle self-care, cry when I need to but otherwise carry on.

The truth is, there is no panacea.  I either put a bullet between my eyes or I continue to exist.  What that existence entails is another matter altogether.  Some people seem to think that the fact that I am alive is more important than whether I am living.  Some, I guess...don't seem to much care whether I'm around or not.

I don't want to go on antidepressants again and have been resisting this call no matter how many times it is raised.  To medicate once more will seem a defeat.  I was so happy to have met K in those early days last year that I felt confident enough to begin weaning myself off of them.  It was a long, difficult process, but I made it through, and have not experienced any withdrawal effects in some time.  I suppose, to return to them now, would make me feel as though the months between late May 2010 and now never happened.  Sometimes it seems that they didn't, like my time with K was a brief, joyful dream, and now I have awoken once more to the cold shadow of dawn.

I do things every day that are supposed to be helping me recover.  I took a walk with Mom.  I saw LB, my friend of roughly sixteen years.  We all had dinner together.  She brought me a bouquet of flowers.  They are sitting on my dresser now, and remind me of the flowers K used to buy me.  She did a yoga routine with me, but it didn't help much.  I'll meditate again before bed tonight, but that will not help much.  None of this is helping me much.  Nothing takes away that stabbing emptiness of loss, not even sleep, where K visits me in my dreams every night, sometimes to sit with me, sometimes to tell me again that he does not love me anymore.  Nothing will bring K back.  This is my world now.  This is the reality I do not have the courage to escape.