Of Cats, Facebook and Heartache: Learning to Leave your Exes Baggage on the Counter
Schrodinger’s Cat is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics. It involves a cat, a vial of poison and a Geiger counter. I won’t go into the details but the long and short of it is that if a certain condition is achieved, the vial of poison is cracked thus killing the cat. Yet, as the cat is inside the box, it is in a state of superposition where it is both alive and dead that is until, we open the box.
In the same way as the cat about to die, our existence is also in a state of superposition. We tend to think of time as a mere linear existence. Point A leads to Point B. Yet behind every decision is a million possibilities collapsing to one based on how we act.
Do I eat today or do I not?
Do I pass this paper or do I pass tomorrow?
Most importantly, do I fall in love or do I catch myself from falling.
Love, is painfully common among adolescents. By age 16, 60% of adolescents have had a relationship, majority of which end within a few months. The adolescent brain, despite its quirks is still a developing one. At this age, we are only managing to find out about ourselves, looking for our own needs: intimacy, affiliation, sexuality, identity and autonomy. There is nothing like falling in love the first time. There is also nothing like the pain of losing it.
Yet for all of its spotlight in our songs and our movies, love and most especially how we deal with breakups is in fact completely misunderstood. Filipino Teens are unwilling to talk to adults about the matters of the heart and sex.
Physiologically speaking, breakups trigger a major change similar to individuals undergoing depression. In a study of women who have previously had a breakup within the past six months, breakups affect the parts of the brain which are involved in thought processes. According to a study by Larson and Sweeten, Adolescents are more likely to engage in unhealthy coping mechanisms during their breakups: drinking, doing drugs and engaging in risky sex.
This speaks of a problem, not only individually but as a society with how we deal with our emotions. Much like the cat in the vial of poison, we have a tendency to take our hurt, take our pain, take our histories and seal them away in a box. Hiding them from view so that we don’t have to feel hurt or pain or remember ever again. These are our own vials of poison, and we are unwilling to see if our heart has (like the cat) survived.
Days turn to weeks, weeks turn to months, months turn to years. We keep hiding our pain in boxes, storing them away deeper and deeper into the recesses of our souls. We say that we are in fact, okay, that we have moved on. Yet what do we see when we are all alone? What do we feel when we are at our lowest? We keep searching for people to love us yet how can they do that when the room that is your heart is filled with naught but boxes of cats and vials of poison. After all, how can one board a flight if we are filled to the brim with excess baggage.
In making this essay, I came face to face with this conundrum. How can I talk about moving forward and self-love when I am unable to do so? How can I talk about taking the cat out of the bag, when my own heart is filled to the brim with stacks upon stacks of boxes. Thus, the process began. I mean apart from the usual “don’t talk to your ex”, “remove all reminders of them” there are lessons I have to learn.
Originally, I intended making this long winded introduction about a love long gone, looking at it with rose colored glasses. I was clearly past the depression stage, yet when we reminisce we have a tendency to romanticize the past, making it better than it actually was. In his Ted Talk “How to Fix a Broken Heart”, Guy Winch suggested to make a list of cons everytime you imagine the pros of your relationship or in my case, get three of your friends to make a scathing review of all the stupidity you put yourself through. Trust me, it works.
Yet most importantly, he discussed the concept of a hole. Not the one recently discovered 52 light years away mind you, but the one in our hearts. We can attempt to fill that with money, success, power or sex yet it in fact can only be filled by love. Unlike the old “he completes me” madness, it requires self-exploration and learning to fall in love with yourself.
It involves taking all of the damage, all of the baggage and not just shoving it out of our lives but embracing it. Think Marie Kondo style, we have to appreciate the situation for what it TRULY was, with no bias. We have to thank it for the lessons that it taught us and, this is the important part, throw it away and not let it shape our lives. Because Moving On is not merely forgetting about the past, sorry Marcoses.
Rather, it is accepting the failures of the past and forgiving yourself for it. It is a constant flow of change, allowing yourself to dip in the waters of time and be carried to the other side as a changed individual better than who they were a day before. It is loving the person in the mirror, accepting their flaws and their weaknesses and working past them.
So we go back to the beginning, back to the vials and the cats both alive and dead. Opening the box is one of the most frightful situations known to mankind. After all, time only runs in one direction. However, it is still the most important step. If you ask me have I moved on? Fully moved on? Frankly, who knows? Attempting to unload years of pain and hurt takes time it might even be a project lasting my whole lifetime. After all, you also have to open the box before the box holding the current hurt. Yet, it is a project worth undertaking. Hey might even get a cute cat at the end of it.
