When it's time to move on

One of the great dilemmas we all face at some point in time in our lives is when to write

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(newspaper parlance for the end) on something significant in our past and move on.

When anything goes afoul in our lives; death, terminal illness, romantic break-up, job loss, etc., Elizabeth Kubler-Ross says we go through five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Some people work through these stages in a timely manner and get on with their lives while others get "stuck" in a stage and have a difficult time working past it. Some are stuck for years while some are stuck forever.

The stage we'll most likely to get stuck in is the next to last one; Depression. We say we can't believe this is happening to us, then we get angry that it is, then we try to bargain our way out of it and then we get depressed because it's obviously out of our hands and there's nothing we can do to change it. We're especially liable to get stuck in the Depression stage if something has happened to us that is beyond our control to change or influence like death or the ending of a relationship. Even with someone's death, we eventually learn how to cope with the reality of our situation, recognize it's not going to change and then move on down the road.

It has been my experience that the ending of a relationship willingly by another person is even harder to cope with ultimately than the death of a loved one, because in a vast majority of cases with the exception of suicide, the people who died didn't want to die and they didn't die because they didn't love you any more. But that's exactly what DOES happen when someone withdraws their love from you and, in the act of doing so, breaks all the promises they made to you over the course of the relationship. It's those promises about undying love and devotion to you that bounce around in your head constantly while one is awake AND asleep. And it's the inability to resolve the conflict between what was then and what is now and the conundrum between just saying something and actually meaning what we say that gets us stuck and keeps us stuck.

About the only way to get unstuck is for something dramatic to either happen or not happen. For example, if you believe someone still loves you, you look for signs that they do, even though their words may say they don't. If you see these signs, or at least THINK you see them, you continue to hang on to your dream. If you don't see any signs, it eventually makes it easier for you to let go. Or if you believe the ending of a relationship was a situational decision rather than an emotional decision, you wait for their situation to change. If their situation DOES change, but they make no attempt to rekindle the relationship they once had with you, then that should also help you move on.

Sometimes someone else's situation changes outside the dyad of you and the one you love that makes it possible for one to get unstuck as well and move on to the acceptance stage and beyond; towards a new goal of anticipation, excitement, and new hopes and dreams that takes you away from that person you found impossible to turn loose of for so long because in order for any of us to survive, we have to have hopes and dreams. We have to have a reason for getting up in the morning and nothing else does that for us like the fresh embers of a new love that burns in our hearts like the old love did for so long.

The most important thing for all of us to realize, whether we're the one that's stuck or whether a friend or loved one of ours is stuck, is that nothing will change until the person reaches the point where they're able to initiate the change from within. It's not like getting your vehicle stuck. When we do that, we call a friend or a wrecker and they pull us out. When we're emotionally stuck in a stage, no one can pull us out no matter how hard they try or how much they hope they can.

We're the only ones who can get ourselves unstuck and we have to have a compelling, overpowering reason to do so.

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If you're looking for a Christmas gift for someone you love, my book "Thoughts About Love; You Take My Breath Away" can be purchased at Accents Etc, on the bricks in downtown McCook.