Can I get off this rollercoaster now?

beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows.

- from Manual of Muad'Dib by the Princess Irulan

I thought I was doing pretty well with this break up when I went to bed last night. I had talked for nearly 24 hours straight with a variety of people in different media. I wrote down my thoughts. I let the emotions sweep through me and let them take their course without repression. I felt wounded, but optimistic.

Then this morning I woke up and things were... not as great. In that twilight moment between awake and asleep, when only the most basic of thoughts start to move, I instinctively reached over to Steph's part of the bed. Not finding her, I was a little disappointed and thought she'll be back from Spain soon. When the higher thoughts started to surface and coalesce, I realized what happened - and then I went through the grief, confusion and the whole gamut of emotion all over again. It was like breaking up one more time, but with the entire range of emotion I felt in 24 hours time compressed into about 30 seconds. I'm just glad the intensity was turned down.

Talking to Erin last night, she made mention how when she broke up with her ex, anytime she was alone she'd stare blankly at the wall for hours. I'm at work, with a task infront of me, listening to my ipod and trying to shut my mind down except for my work but it's not just working. I just sit back in my chair, fold my arms behind my head, and stare at the rows of neuroscience journals over my desk. At this rate, I should memorize the article numbers' correlation with dates of publishing soon...

The quote I picked is something for me to remind myself right now. Having gone through basically 3 other breakups, 2 of which were about 3 year relationships, I know now that the first few weeks are critical. If I don't take care of my feelings, I drop into a horrible terrible depression for months on end. I'm doing my best to look at things optimistically. It helps that I see things logically about how things ended, that there are no hard feelings, and it also helps to feel this sense of peace deep inside. That peace reinforces the idea that this is the right path.