Move–before the emotional rollercoaster runs you over!

Sing. Dance. Bike around the neighborhood. Fly a kite. Go back to your grade school and enter the classroom or walk in the pathway where you had the most infectious laughter. Reconnect with your Algebra teacher or any of your favorite teacher. Be a child again.  

Keep on moving.

You see? You’re moving. Don’t underestimate the wisdom behind baby steps. They are your emotional armaments in this emotional battle. (I’m no psycho-therapist but this much I have learned about moving on–and moving forward.) 

“A sparrow in a hat can make a happy home,” sang Garvoche in Les Miserables. He added: “A worm can roll a stone. A bee can sting a bear. A fly can fly around Versailes ‘cos flies don’t care…A flea can bite the bottom of the Pope in Rome.” It may be an inappropriate citation but that song is about never underestimating the power of little actions. 

Everyone has had his or her heart broken. Kings and queens, even paupers have experienced it. The trouble with falling in love is it is both a walk in the park and a jump over burning coals. 

Hurray to those who have found their forever. Bask in their glory. #SanaAll.

But hurray, too, to those whose hearts have been broken by infidelity, lies, betrayals, or the loss of love by the other partner. They, too, will find joy someday. But first, they need to move on. 

Moving on is paved with treacherous roads. Huwag kang marupok. 

It is always good to salvage a relationship from the brink of extinction.  When reality, however, dictates that no matter how much you wade in the waters of hope, you will imminently lose your partner to the other person, sometimes to a situation, like he or she has just fallen out of love.  When that happens, you are left with two options: swim back to the shore or drown in misery. He or she who chooses to sink in grief is dead by now if not left bobbing up and down in the waters of uncertainties.  He or she who chooses to coast till he or she reaches the shore is anchored on finding hope, finding life and finding love again.  (My cardiologist told me that broken-heartedness is a disease that can kill. The pharmacological pill can help but the best drug, she said, is the self.)

Every day, like today, is precious in your healing. Get up. That’s the first step. Lethargy will keep you from borrowing trouble; from replaying and rewinding beautiful moments shared together; from imagining things. Imaginary things are harder to bear than the actual ones. Get real. Feel the pain. Face it. Move–before the emotional roller coaster run you over. 

When you recognize that you’re hurting, my psychiatrist friend told me, you are half-healed. But if you keep on sweeping the dust under the carpet, your emotional baggage just keeps on piling up then they become garbage. You will stink. And you don’t want that. Put the garbage in the emotional incinerator. Freshen up with self-loving thoughts. Or celebrate with friends. That’s why you have friends — they will keep you warm in the Decembers of your life. 

The art of letting go is mathematically proportional to the art of self-preservation.  Like all ethics and etiquettes, letting go and preserving oneself are crafts that can be mustered and mastered by people who want to get out of the crude and rude vicious cycle of pain.  These skills are the summation of one’s conscious conviction—albeit peppered and punctured with nerve-wracking and heart-wrenching feelings—to be happy and complete in one’s silence and solitude. To move on is to consciously put a cap to your pain. 

To get healed is a conscious effort. And healing begins with letting go. And moving on is tantamount to reclaiming self-preservation. 

Love yourself.