Break up and shut up!

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s divorce is old news so six years since the break up, the marriage should not be spoken of unfavorably. This week in entertainment news, Brad Pitt succumbed to media pressure to spill the beans on his split with Jennifer Aniston in an exclusive interview with Parade magazine. The beans left a bitter taste in the mouths of gossip consumers globally. He cheated, and then justified his actions by bad-mouthing the victim. 

Aniston commented after the split that Pitt was missing a ‘sensitivity chip,’ and it seems she was right (even though it was wrong to bad mouth, she had a bit more right considering he cheated).

I’ve never believed that following a break up you can become good friends with each other; that is too painful and too murky. Sure enough, this interview should do the trick to end Brad’s faux friendship with the former Friends star.

I’ve heard many stories in my short life on why old wounds can never heal with the presence of an ex. 

Firstly, it makes it very difficult to see what’s next if you’re still friends with an ex. 

I know of one instance where a break up was over and a man returned to a friend to tell her that she was still the greatest catch he’d ever come across. Of that he was sure. 

I say, if you can’t catch the catch, then simply don’t play ball. After breaking her heart, he returned many unattached times to reminisce on the good times he had but never with a promise of return or an apology. He never accepted his part in the break up or the pain and remained a painful existence instead.  His presence was toxic, agonizing and stifled her growth. While it served his ego and killed his conscience, his relationship back-tracking was a waste of both of their times and emotions. It’s called a break up because it’s broken. At that point, if it’s not marriage, you step away. If it is marriage, you fight for it, not comment on how “dull” it was for you (ala Brad Pitt). I was once told if you ever feel bored in the place that you are, then the only boring person within that place is you. I’m a big believer in making light of most situations, having fun wherever I go and leaving everything I touch with the knowledge that I did everything I could to maximize that situation. Living like that means living without regrets and for me, that’s the only option in life. 

When my friend’s ex would later speak of the break up he would speak about her inability to complete him, not his inability to keep her. Perhaps the better thing to have said or concluded would just be that they were simply incompatible, that it was a relationship with some good but not enough to sustain a relationship for life.

There was another instance that I was close to in which it took four years for another lovelorn girl to recover from the salacious lies that her ex had spread. It was four years before they could even look at each other. Four years before he admitted his flaws to others but at that point, the gossip was spread, the damage was irreparable and the memory of what they almost had would always be tainted because of the dishonorable way it ended. 

It should be a general rule that when love ends, conversations about it should too. Of course both parties should be allowed the acceptable grieving period where they go through the motions of healing. 

Take time to get over the shock of the split, come to terms with the fact that you’ll no longer be together, don’t adopt denial in the belief that seeing each other might reignite old feelings. When you realize it’s over, find an outlet for your anger, and rise from the depression by looking optimistically at the happiness that may later come. Once you accept that, you’ll quickly notice the men/women out there ready to make you smile again. 

An ex serves a great purpose to shape the person you become. Through the experience you learn what you do and don’t want in a person. You learn about the greatness of receiving love, and you perfect your ability to give it because of the raised standards that you have for yourself at the end of it.

It is no great service to society for you to stop somebody else from finding love because it didn’t work out with you. Your trash may be someone else’s treasure and no matter the heartbreak, the pain or the time it takes to heal, you at least have the lessons to treasure and a better you to show for it. 

Everybody deserves somebody and you’d hate to be responsible for someone else's loneliness.

A Tribute to 9/11 ten years on...

The legacy of 9/11 should be life and humanity not death and destruction.

Ten years on from the day and the event that robbed the western world of it’s innocence, the world has stopped to remember; the dead, the living, the grieving and the lost.

I watched the Naudet brothers documentary two years ago and again last night. The documentary brought the eyes of the world inside the Twin Towers. Originally, the brothers set out to document the growth of a firefighter from boy to man over nine months. The boy, ‘Tony’ had a foreboding wish to experience a fire, to prove to his men and to himself that he could do the job. That he could be a hero.

Then September 11 came.

Then his youthful optimism vanished.

The Naudet brothers hoped to watch a boy metamorphose into a man in nine months.

In just nine hours, it happened.

The graphic documentary walks viewers into the lobby of the Twin Towers. Hundreds of workers rushed down the fire stairs. Workers bodies were burnt, grown men were reduced to tears.

Fear was in everyone’s eyes. Hope was in everyone’s hearts. Prayers were on everyone’s lips. Loved ones were in everyone’s thoughts. Survival was in everyone’s steps.

 
People leaped from buildings not in an attempt of suicide but in a grand act of bravery and hope. They were leaps of faith in optimism.  It was lovingly done in hope of reaching their families and escaping the hellish flames that engulfed the buildings.
 
Love drove the firefighters to put their lives selflessly at the mercy (or mercilessness) of the flames that rose as the buildings fell.People were crushed with their spirits.

Each firefighter that day ran to the towers in the hope of saving just one life and when the buildings had collapsed, these men courageously rummaged through rubble in search of a body…any body, in hope that they could bury one person with dignity; that one family could have a proper funeral. They never once stopped in their struggle to contemplate that that funeral could be their own.

Nearly 3000 people died that day.

It was somebody’s father. Someone’s mother. Sister. Brother. Daughter. Son. Cousin. Friend.

All these people had hoped that time would heal. I think for New Yorkers, time neither healed or comforted because the running tributes today show hearts still broken, still grieving and still waiting for answers.

I was in New York this time last year and visited the site. The mood becomes instantly somber as you walk through the Financial District. The people are quieter. They are more courteous but also more weary of their surroundings. They jump at sirens. There is a frailty in their faces and a fragility in their responses.

It was sunny the day I visited, but nothing was bright about that stopover. It is still and it is devastating. Families visited the memorial wall the day that I went, thousands of names were engraved into the wall, they are forever etched in people’s memories too.

Many of us still remember where we were the day the news was announced. 9/11 is a day we’ll never forget. The hope is that the lessons will also stay just as potent.

Though life can’t be said to be better for the grieving, what 9/11 brought to New York was a unity it hadn’t known before. One of the busiest cities in the world will stop each year to stand strong together and give thanks for the gifts they had. The lucky ones will give thanks for the gifts they still have.

Tony, the boy-turned-man, who the Naudet brothers filmed went on to marry and have a daughter. Many of the firefighters did. No money nor possession would ever have the importance it once had and love and the search for it only ever increased.

The legacy of the trade centre should be life and humanity not death and destruction because when the event displayed evil at its most corrupt, the rest of us decided to live more lovingly. The rest of us hoped in happiness and good people committed themselves to living out the legacies of the deceased.

New Yorkers are resilient people. They still find a reason to smile.

It is city filled with people that live for joy, fullness of life and fulfillment of dreams.

Firefighters and police officers fought for love of others.

Family members and friends remember lives lost for love of the deceased.

It is hoped that those that never made it out remembered love in their final moments.
 
Ten years on New Yorkers live for love because when life is stripped away from you, love is all that endures.

9/11 – we will never forget.

Happily ever after…when never is more in sight.

I have been incessantly listening to Adele’s album this week; putting me in a happy/sad/love-longing/depressed/elated/fantastical mood. It pulls on every heart string and stirs every emotion – much like a break-up. I’ve been continuously listening to stories of them too (but that has been less of a choice).

The one track on replay has been ‘hiding my heart,’ about the inevitable heartbreak that comes from a transient relationship.

One friend I have knows all about this. This week I felt, saw and attempted to help her heartbreak as she dignifiedly watches on as an old flame, passionately prepares for his wedding to a new love (less than a year on from their break up). The girl he’s with also experienced devotee devastation when her former five year relationship crumbled. One woman’s treasure, was another woman’s treasure and woman number one was trashed instead. Love had to be cruel to be kind to her and though we know not to play with fire, sometimes we need to be burnt to move on.

It won’t make much sense to her for a while but there would never be enough love, or enough joy to fill her in a relationship where the love she had was unrequited.

I’m no expert on why one girl gets chosen over the other and what makes a man commit but I do know that if he hasn’t committed to you, then he’s simply not the one. I am all for shades of grey… but for healing’s sake, this is one truth that will always be black and white to me. If love exists it finds a way to conquer.

What gives me hope and assurance in this is a friend who has newly found love. Love even visited her in her dreams before she met him. True story.

I love this tale so much because this woman confirms that the right man is worth waiting for. Good things come to those who wait. The cliché is true.

She however is anything but cliché. She is vibrant, intelligent, beautiful (in and out), hard-working and very successful. I can’t fault her on anything. She is everything most women would hope to be (me included).

Women used to be told to downplay their intelligence so as to avoid intimidating the opposite sex. Her intelligence attracted a mental and emotional equal and the prospect of finding something like that thrills and delights me.

This young beauty was single for a while but was a champion for love. I’d hear her talk about meeting a man that brought her joy most days that I saw her. Perhaps her positivity powered this new romance. God knows she deserved that happiness. Everybody does and most people will get to experience it, but not without a period of loneliness first.

I think the secret to this is that in order to appreciate the love you have, you have to experience what it means to live without them so when they walk on set as an extra in your life, you quickly realize that you’d prefer them as a regular cast member with the scenes of romance on replay.

The real stuff is good too. The fights and the way you overcome them. The dark moments and the days their light rescues you from that misery. The moment when simply seeing them where you are is enough to satiate your hungry soul. Hearing their voice will do that too. Then their’s that day it unlocks happiness that was previously foreign to you. It’s this love that I’m waiting for.

It’s also this love that I hope soon comes to my friend. Heartbreak has forced her to hide her heart, but I hope that when the grieving is over and the healing begins, she is able to reopen her heart to find love that friend #2 in this story has got to know.

While love songs do nothing for my patience, they do plenty for my passion. and remind me that that fire is worth waiting out in the cold for. There’s a positive in everything.