PAINT WITH WORDS

Going separate ways is the sugar-coated version of breaking up. When a relationship ends, it’s as if the entire weight of the planet Earth is on your shoulders. You feel lost-the only person who makes you feel more beautiful than average, the person who makes you feel safe and secured, the only person who can make your stomach somersault, the only person who can make you cry and laugh at the same is gone. Gone. Away. Away in the arms of somebody. Or just away, with nobody. You feel stupid for ever falling for him/her, for intentionally letting your guard down, for wailing about your lost. You feel like it’s the end of human civilization. You just feel like a bowl full of shit.

In times like this, there are only a couple of options to choose from:

• Kill. Kill your ex or yourself or the third party, if any.
• Do nothing. Stay put to where you are and no matter what happens, do not move a muscle.
• Move. Move on. Move out. Whichever.

Considering the options, you’d opt for the third, move. The first-kill, is unfriendly and quite grave with a touch of brutality and sprinkles of morbidity. It would stain your hands in case you decide to kill the subject using a knife. It would cost you a gun and a silencing device they attach to the gun just to eradicate the sound of the gunshot. The second-could be considered, if you want to ruin your life, become smelly as a skunk and immovable as a sloth. The third-it’s the best yet to be offered. After a relationship ends, what better thing to do than move-move on or move out, whichever.

Before you move, you must, it is a must, a requisite for whatever decision you will implement, you must consider this: are you moving on or moving out?

Most people are blinded by the notion that moving out is identical to moving on. For some generations now, people think that when you move out, literally, you begin to move on. But moving on takes a lot more effort than moving out. Moving out versus moving on.

It’s moving out when:

• You change your contact information like cellular phone number, landline number, fax machine number, office number, electronic mail address, messenger address, friendster, facebook, multiply, etc. You don’t have to change these information to move on. Once you change these information, nothing changes-you are still single and freshly heart-shattered.
• You move out of your house, your street. You are literally moving out and emotionally moving out. Do not move to a new place-do it when the wound has been cured, naturally or with someone’s help, not just a rebound, of course but it might help-might.
• You do not utter his name in a conversation. You try hard to pretend that you forgot the break-up and that you have moved on, but you’re trying just too hard that people from all walks of life notice that you’re not-you’re miserable and counting.
• You delete or block your ex in your online accounts like friendster, facebook, multiply, etc.
• You avoid people-people your ex knows, your ex’s friends, classmates, etc. For goodness’ sake, you are like Harrison Ford in The Fugitive being chased by Tommy Lee Jones. Do not run away from people-it’s like running away from the past and burying yourself alive.

It’s moving on when:

• You embrace reality. You cry. You wail. You sob. You curse. It’s part of the arrogant and pathetic yet effective process of moving on. You let your emotions out. You won’t give a damn to what people say-you listen to yourself, you pamper yourself, you love yourself. Embrace the break-up. Embrace the fact that you and the person you claim to love the most are now standing in separate paths and destined to walk forth alone. Embrace the fact that you two are over. If you have to drink pails of gin and tonic or dry martini or vodka-go, but don’t abuse the privilege. Don’t keep everything inside. It doesn’t matter if the people around you share your sympathy-what matters is that you sympathize with yourself but do not overdo it.
• You talk about your ex a lot. Talk about him during breakfast, lunch, dinner. Talk about him/her to all of your organizations. Talk about him/her to a stranger in the bus, the library, the streets. Talk. Talk. Talk. You’ll eventually get sick and tired of his/her name that you would even puke to the sound of it then there-no more talks about him/her, lessen talks about him/her. And when you see him/her, he/she would just be another familiar face in the crowd no longer capable of piercing your heart with mere smiles and grins.
• You reminisce the moments you’ve spent together. The progress begins when you start accepting the fact that what you reminisce are now part of the  bitter yet educational past and are mere memories that can soon be forgotten at the sight of a new approaching relationship.
• You stay single for a while. Mourn for his/her lost and for your lost. Start retrieving your self-esteem. Give yourself some time to love nobody else, but yourself. After all, when you begin to love yourself, the rest of the world follows.
• You are not frightened by the thought that your ex might just be anywhere within two meters in diameter from you. If you come across him/her, deal with it, it was destiny that brought you to it. If he says hi, respond-not exactly nicely, but as nice as you can master for that moment.
• You don’t do the things a person moving out does.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter if you’re heart has been wrecked by some jerk or bastard. Significance can come from a thorn-embedded break-up; the significant thing is how well we rise after falling. We start to love ourselves again, we replenish what we’ve lost with what we’ve still got like friends, family-it was just one person who tore you into pieces, there are still a billion of people out there, and one of them might just be eager to mend you back to pieces-but you have to do it yourself because only you and nobody else can inflict happiness and pain to yourself.