And now, for a video of someone who makes post-breakup me look moderately sane:
I mean, I’ve heard of cutting off your nose in spite of your face.
But cutting half your nose in spite of your mate? What’s he got after the high of power dicing his possessions is over? I’ve seen this kinda stuff before. The self-sabotage retaliation. For a lotta chicks, they’ll do that Lifetime original dramatic reaction to getting dumped (chopping off their long blonde locks, dying it doo doo hues, bringing down the makeup and up the numbers on the scale). For many dudes, it’s getting drunk, dumb, and numb enough to justify doing all the violent stuff they wanna do when they’re sober. Like taking a baseball bat to the china cabinet. Or… something like this Youtube video.
And by “this Youtube video” I mean angry ripoff of The Willy Wonka room.
I get it, though.
Well, the immediate reaction, at least. Yes, I do appreciate the visceral knee-jerk reflex of getting angry. I’ve been there many a time, marinating in hate, and still occasionally take a holiday to hostility island in the form of frisbee’d dishware. But as a veteran of dwelling in this sentiment, I can say for sure that it should stop before you hop on the plane for your hate vacation. You may not be able to stop that initial feeling; but it’s what you do with it that determines where you end up fastest. Sure, you can turn the preliminary tears or vent-fests with friends into obsessive spite and resent – but that does nothing for anyone. Well… actually that’s a lie. It makes you really good at being hateful and miserable. Until you act that way to innocent bystanders and ultimately lose all your friends and live in a Chocolate Factory office prison of your own making, screaming at people about the fine print on the nonexistent document regarding your 12 year relationship that wasn’t even a marriage.
Then, on the other hand, you can use that shitty feeling to your advantage. For example, the last time I felt love-spurned by someone was the first time I really realized that I may have done a little evolving in the past couple years. Not enough to break my shoulder back patting, mind you. But enough to stop and notice that I was asking what I could do to make myself happy. (Actually it was more like “WTF am I doing with my life?”) Had I been putting my life on pause for another person? Why? Could I change it now? Over the course of time, I started refining my diet to even-healthier options, working out at least twice a day, getting a second job, going back to school for what I wanted to do…
Wait. Am I Taxi Driver?
“… no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body.
From now on it’ll be total organization. Every muscle must be tight.”
While I decide on whether I’m a mohawk bound psychopath or not, I will say this: I did find that I could love everyone better once I was taking care of the “me” half of a relache. Which, incidentally, should never be a “you complete me” but more like, “you complete the other half of our mythical man-lady chimera creature that’s got two boobs, two balls, and genitals that fit like jigsaw pieces”. (Insert scissor sister and dude on dude analogy here for political correctness.)
So, yeah. It’s a natch reactch – ‘cause people go through breakups, divorces, or become a widows all the time. And many of them immediately start putting their status quo life through the shredder to deal. That’s fine, I suppose, if you’re willing to take the stuff that comes out the other end and turn it into something functional. That way your time with the other person wasn’t all in vain. You may not win the Wonka chocolate grand prize you’d wanted, but you can get something ultimately outta the relache – even after it’s ended. Something better for you than someone who didn’t wanna be with you. But if you start slicing the pieces instead’a picking ‘em up?
Well, we all know how that ends.
(Unless, of course, this German dude’s video goes uber viral.)