This may be familiar: There's just you, him and the slight chill of the rain, falling softly, gently. There's the heavy feeling of dread, knowing that this will be the last. There's the bittersweet pain of ending a supposed love to last a lifetime. Then, he walks away, in the rain, behind the shadows of the night, and you remain rooted from where you stand, and you wonder: How are you supposed to pick up the shattered pieces of your heart strewn all over the pavement?

"Shared Devotion" by Laura Schoonover

Being brokenhearted is a lot like being Wile E. Coyote, waiting for the anvil to fall on your head or the dynamite to blow under your butt, Road Runner (your partner) sweeping by, beep-beeping his way. When one ends a romance (whether budding or wilting), the after-effects are always the same:

• Numbness: Moving in slow motion or on auto-pilot comes naturally, reaching the point where you don't and can't care anymore. For a while there, you take comfort in the numbness because it's safe and harmless, and anything more than safe and harmless is too much to feel. Slowly, like trickles of sand, the numbness wears off, only to be replaced by anger.



• Resentment: How dare he walk away from this? From you? What utter nerve and unmitigated gall! And then you curse in five dialects and throw him the one-finger salute to let him know just how bitchy you can be. But it gets too strenuous and taxing to be angry all the time to everybody. You're angry with your boss for asking you to redo the sloppy work you finished three days ago (which, to your thinking, was not sloppy at all). You're angry with your co-workers who are dizzy in love with their latest amore. (Brokenhearted folks tend to get antsy and crazy around those who are in the throes of love). You're angry with the passenger across from you who doesn't have any fashion sense because she's wearing a turtleneck in the middle of summer. The little and the big things will drive you crazy until you begin to feel resigned.



• Acceptance: When you begin to accept that it didn't work out, you conduct a post performance evaluation and assessment plan. In other words, you begin to wonder: just where in the hell did you screw up? And it is in this phase that you realize one of the following:
  
  
  1. It's your fault. You didn't trust him enough. You didn't love him enough. You didn't . . . (supply the missing words).
  
  
  
  2. It's not your fault. He couldn't commit. It's not in his nature to do so. He found someone else. He didn't stick up for you from the wrath of his parents (wimp!).
  
  
  
  3. It's nobody's fault. Clichéd as it may sound, "You were just not meant to be," "You were like two ships passing in the night and never shall meet," (for to do so, would mean one big explosion), or my favorite, "You're two parallel lines set out on different courses in one Cartesian plane." To my thinking, casting blame is moot and academic. It's the healing that counts. And while we can intellectualize the causes and effects of a broken heart, nobody has the cure.

On an interesting note, when one ends a relationship based on carnal lust, hot wicked sex or red scorching talons of eroticism, it's a slightly different case.

For people who don't want commitment, and all the hassles of this gigantic, overwhelming and costly feeling called "love," one usually resorts to a commitment-less, casual, carefree relationship, commonly referred to as a "thing." As in, "hey, we had a thing going." As if it can be compared to golf balls and cat food or something equally trivial.

When a "thing" ends, no matter who ends it, it's always taboo to:

1. Cry. You can't grieve out in the open. Many may agree that when one can't grieve, there's no full sense of closure. You can't cry because that would mean you made a big deal out of it. You got attached. (That's the number one rule in a casual relationship: Never get attached. Once you do, you lose.) Easier said than done.
2. Carry a grudge. You have to try to remain friends or at least be civil, even if it kills you. There should be no drama, no throwing of knives, pots or pans, or for that matter, bread.
3. Dwell on it. Move on man. It wasn't a big deal anyway. A few laughs, some rough tumble in the hay or car or wherever. It was an incredible joyride. It's over.

I wonder though, when it ends, who hurts more? The ones who loved and lost or the ones who lusted and lost? For those who fell in love and lost, they could openly cry, hurl insults and invectives and be comforted by friends with cheap wine and cases of beer. For those who fell in lust and lost, they are denied this privilege because after all, it wasn't a big deal and you have to keep silent and bear it all in. Losing someone is always painful. That's the universal truth. Whether it was a nine-year-old dog, a nine-year-old child, a nine-month-old love affair, or a nine-day-old "thing." The awful misery and bittersweet pain will throb, especially at night, when everybody's asleep. And it's just a stone cold sober you, the bright moon and the soft whir of the ceiling fan. In this rite of passage to adulthood, you realize, it doesn't matter whether you loved and lost or lusted and lost, because in your head and in your heart, you've grown up a little.

And you smile. After all, you didn't entirely lose everything . . . You still have yourself, the moon and the ceiling fan.

Bio:
Shanidar Cabaraban is a 24-year-old teacher of Asian and World History at Xavier University in the Philippines. She is a third year law student and a weekly columnist for her local paper. Her column usually discusses women's issues, concerns and empowerment, which has caused quite a stir among residents, to her enjoyment.

Shanidar can be reached at: shanidar@eudoramail.com