Relationships

Another Love Will Come: How To Handle The Phase Between Being Heartbroken And Moving On

by Shadz Loresco
Stocksy

Wipe the “everyone else is moving on” mantra off your lips. A little hope is enough to crash your huge pity party. Scrawl this Lara Fabian line on your bedroom wall: “otro amor vendrá” (another love will come).

"Honey," he tells me while vodka was melting my brain, "You have to psyche yourself into moving on." I nod (the equivalent of rolling my eyes when I am sober) as if he just showed me how to solve a math equation.

I am not quite yet in that hopeful place, let alone in the mood to be. But, when it comes to moving on, Sam has it all down.

He taught me we all have to start somewhere. Nevermind that we are still cruising through the haze; the definite, clear points of our lives are the distance between California and New York.

There are the endless bar nights and the pursuit of pleasure is so high that it can numb us for days.

We surround ourselves with friends whose advice ranges from the sympathetic to practical to philosophical to divine, depending on how buzzed they are.

The next day, we suit up, go to work and act natural by eating, exercising and even catching up with buddies, all while nursing the mother of hangovers.

We can stress ourselves out of depression, or we can pop all the pills in the cabinet. We convince ourselves that we are better people without them.

There is the rule of thirds by which we must abide: Divide the amount of time we spent with someone into three and the quotient is the amount of time we allow ourselves to mourn. And yet, in our bedrooms, we still catch scents of the one we loved.

There really is a place between getting stuck and moving on and there should be a word for it. But, we can build that place for ourselves. It can be a place of hope rather than one of depression or disability.

The road may be hazy, but that does not mean we are directionless. While there will be booze and bouts of insomnia; there will also be friends who have our backs.

We all grieve in our own ways; there is no generic prescription for totally getting over someone. Not every person goes through the same phases of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

But, when it comes to moving on from a lost love, we all have to start somewhere. My friend Sam was able to do it.

Sam's words, over vodka, remind me of Aunt May in “Spiderman." At the end of "The Amazing Spiderman 2," she was holding a box filled with Uncle Ben's stuff. Peter asked if she was throwing the stuff away. No, she wasn't.

She said, “I am going to look at it one last time… and then I will put it where it belongs.”

We all start somewhere. Perhaps, a writing on the wall will do for now.

Otro amor vendrá y será mejor: "Another love will come and it will be better."