When you get rid of something like a habit or an addiction, you feel like destroying even the slightest hint of it that could prove that it was ever around.
There are many reasons (feelings) for this:
· Shame
· Guilt
· Mere Indifference
· Pure disgust with yourself for ever doing it
· A complete aversion towards the habit, thing or…ahem…person
· You grow up
You just want to wash your hands clean of it all, as if it never existed and by removing any trace that it did exist at some point, you are healing yourself and moving on. Trust me, the feeling is great. Almost peaceful and to me, it’s very nearly like an Alanis Morisette song if put in words. The only thing that could resurrect your pain and misery that you faced after you had to first give it up, would be if that particular ‘it’ has a mind of its own and decides to try and squash your life again. Maybe you won’t agree with me, but honestly it’s the only way to move on and oh, believe me, I have learned a lot from it, too. Sure, it does pain me to know that I used to be foolish about some of it, but you can’t change the past and the best thing you can do is live your present. By learning, you change. You shouldn’t confuse yourself with changing to learn. And you can apply this to different things: eating bad food at a resto (lesson learnt: never go there again!), being in a relationship with someone abusive, turning down a high-paying job and the list goes on.
But anyway, you burn letters, delete photographs, delete emails, throw things out and yeah, sometimes it isn’t easy to delete the person or thing or habit from your mind. Discarding of physical things that are related to it however is healing enough. May be its best that we are human and have not the ability to discard feelings completely but also, if it’s bad enough, your mind is sane enough to not let you anywhere near it again or you invoke your brain to create an invisible force-field against it. The experience itself toughens you up, makes you strong, makes you learn and you will find something much greater in the future to come. Most of all, you will make whatever you can of it, when it comes to you because you realize and know that it’s very, very true. Those things happen for a reason.
From February of this year on, I’ve started the tradition of having at least 4 blog-posts a month and now, maybe I can increase that to eight. I like even numbers and I shouldn’t make your eyes hurt with too much of information and in only too many words. So from September on, I will be the change. And this is my fifth post for this month. Ah, variation. A Clean Break from consistency. Which also brings me back to the underlying motto of this post, cleansing of an old habit (its nature is up to you to determine: bad or good or…) is always self-healing in itself. I swear by it.
