On sadness and hard times

 All of us have faced some hard times at some point. Someone more literally capable and/or probably a little bit pretentious would say, sadness defines our beings by contrasting what we are at our best and brightest. While true, it's a little bit eloquent and as a practical person, I'll settle with the more tactile form:

We learn from our fuck-ups.

 I broke up recently. I broke up with the most magnificent person I have ever met. Understandably, I'm a little upset about that, and for the better part of the week I basically lied on the floor hugging my plushie bear, until I perceived that the floor was dirty, and realized I should do something about that(a few days had passed at this point). So I did something about that, and cleaned my room, and by the end of the week I had thrown out five garbage bags worth of useless stuff I had held on to for some reason.

But I digress.

 Well, not exactly, as the manual labor is a key-part of keeping my mind clear and capable of rational thought. On the other hand, I know that disregarding the problem only ever made it worse, so it's a two-edged blade. But having my mind shifted from emotion to logic, I condensed the reasons that leaded my life away from all things shiny, happy and syrup-flavored: "Why?" and "What did I do wrong?". Of course things are never this simple, but I had to start somewhere.

 "Why?" is always the most important question. "What?", "Who? "When? "and "Where?" are just window dressing. In this case, "why?" has at least five different answers that all tie together, but the answer I found consoling came from a conversation I had with her early on our relationship, and it makes perfect sense to me. For herself, she did the best decision. And I can't really disagree with her on that. And I instantly felt better about the whole thing. It doesn't really answer the "why?", so I can't claim it's anyhow a credible answer, I can't say that's why our relationship ended, it makes no sense in that context. Regardless, it eased my mind.

 The second question is more a question to myself, not truly a part of the problem, but still relevant for myself as a person and a character. To approach the question I asked myself questions in turn. What did I miss? Where did I go wrong? How to carry on from now? And Most importantly; What did I learn?

 Asking those, I realized that only now did I really start learning. Without the sadness and anguish I felt because of what happened I wouldn't have asked these questions from myself. Not on this subject, at least. Relationships don't really have a "good ending", so to speak. I needed those feelings to find out new things about myself. While that may sound self-evident, It's really not. Most people fear failure, sometimes so much that they might not even want to try doing whatever they're planning.

 So I failed. And I fucked up. And while it's always a horrible, horrible feeling to have something so important to you and hopefully someone else crumble down and disintegrate, this moment does not define who I am. Clearly I did something wrong, and I might have lost a friend. But from now on, I could decide not to be that person who made the choices that lead me here.  Rilke has a great quote that's relevant to my thoughts;
 "And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when on is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside".

I discussed the feelings I had with my father, and
after a moment of silence, he matter-of-factly said;
"That's called growing up".

I like his answer.