” You are unable to split up even from your cat.”. That’s what my therapist told me, a million years ago now. And it was bloody true. Over time then luckily (luck is a figure of speech, I worked my butt off to put it in French) step by step some decent separation I made. At least from the cat yes, I have successfully separated. I’m proud of it.
Seriously, these days I’ve been thinking about how people split up.
If I have to rank the top five I would say that in fifth place I put those who have no other way to separate than to make the other disappear, cancel and possibly, to make it all less difficult, before finishing the story or immediately after have already jumped in headfirst into another. They are more or less fake-contrite or do not even pretend, lucky chance if they bother to look for an excuse that works at least in front of the mirror; some folklore but underlying there is cosmic vacuum: they do not process anything, simply do not separate, replace. Bullshit! (you can say bullshit in a blog? maybe not.. whatever, but it all fits… anyway, just in case, the alternative is: help, what a scare!).
On the fourth I put the very classic: anger. Those who vomit on everything. They look for allies everywhere to “dirty” the other or the story itself, they bring in anyone, without mercy, even the baker on the corner if it serves the purpose and they take out evils of various nature and effectiveness, sometimes so subtle and deflagrating that that rookie Putin cannot stand out. In front of the mirror they do not even pretend, they do not seek excuses, they have the absolute certainty of being right and this is enough to justify the atomic bomb. And it can go on for years, sometimes even life. They don’t separate, they destroy. Here again, at the very least a Dicky! fits. Or at least, if one really must not be scurrilous in a blog, allow me a discouraged cry: every man for himself!
For the ranking of the third place I will surprise you, you know who I put there? I put in those that everything is fine: no hostility and so, why not keep seeing each other, even with all the new entries of the case? The watchword is civilization: they have dinners, celebrate birthdays, even go on holiday together and strictly Christmas in the extended family. Why did they split up? They don’t know, maybe it doesn’t even matter, what is the need to ask and elaborate something, what the point of looking for a movement, a transformation into something new, why? Not only did they manage to replicate the same thing as before, with different people, but they even managed both. And together. The most you can ask from life, remains only to drink a Lucano bitter (for non-bloomers, is a quote from an old advertisement). And what’s even cooler, is that they never actually separated! Isn’t that the best? The non-separation. Tooop! All very nice, but I, for safety, I step back for moment, so as to avoid the risk of being overwhelmed by the White Mill and no longer distinguish what is true and what is fear of separation. And believe me, for a former veteran of the no-separation movement the risk is high. Better not to listen to the siren song.
Fourth place is where I put the ones I like the most. The “normal ones”: sheltered or almost sheltered from the coldness of the schizoids and erasers, from the abstractions of the paranoids and from the violence of the rabid or the emotions-platters. Here they are, the ones that make a mess! They do a bit of everything, the category is imaginative and colorful. Yes a bit of disappearance suits us, even little rage and let’s-do-the-best-asshole period are welcome, guilt or bitterness in the mouth? yes of course how can they be missed. All this without overdoing it though: the key is to stay on the line, not to jump into the abyss without a parachute. You go away, you split up with the swing, a little good and a little bad, you go back, you stumble, sometimes you exaggerate, you lose your inner image, the one of the other and the one of relationship, you find it, you lose it again, but at least you really try to separate. Often you do not succeed well, but you try, the dynamic is activated, the search is in progress, the outcome to posterity! You don’t really go to the bottom, you stay a bit on the surface in the search for separation with a capital S, but there is a great ally: Time. Sooner or later the result comes. More or less. Not always, sometimes you pass the sight to try… You can do better, yes, but also much worse. Let’s settle.
Fifth place? Is there really a fifth place? Better than the fourth? And what would the fifth place do? And above all, how would they do? Well, let’s say that in fifth place there are those of the fourth but a bit more “evolved”, with the addition of some features of the third but more sincere (you remain friends for real not for fear). They manage to never erase, the anger is derubricated into momentary pissed offness that immediately gives way to the search for the whys, the whats, the hows, you search alone, you search together, between reluctance and hope you don’t look for shortcuts but go through the tunnel, you live it all, down to the bottleneck of the deepest and most painful motives, you look at each other, you feel each other, you live each other in the most real and sincere way possible. And then you let go, you let the other go to look for his own achievements, and you look for your own achievements, knowing that they will be possible also thanks to the lived relationship, the search made together, the fact of not having erased, not having destroyed, not having pretended, but having lived and having sought interest in the other and his or her fulfillment and having demanded from the other interest in us and our fulfillment. Knowing that separating well realizes the image of the relationship, of what it was, of what we were within that relationship and transforms us from caterpillars into butterflies, ready for the new challenges of life.
Luigia Lazzaro
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