Eat, Pray, Love more

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love is doing what I've always wanted to do when my heart was broken, which is the BIG feeling, or when my heart had turned to dust, which is the utter LACK of feeling and the state I associate with depression. She is on a trip of discovery, discovering herself mostly, eating and drinking and exploring her way through, at this point in the book, Italy.

This is the cure I've been told. When you're heartbroken the only way to recover is to fall in love with YOURSELF. Do things for yourself, pamper yourself...I used to imagine that if I needed some soul-nurturing I would sit at the narrow lake-facing bar at Canoe with a glass of something utterly amazing and simply watch the inland freshwater sea. Maybe I will do this next week instead of eating lunch.

I say that but I know I won't do it.

There are two books I'm reading now, to try to get through the morass. The Brain that Changes Itself offers a heartening bit of encouragement, the bottom line being something akin to "Just think about something else". My therapist says the trick is to simply (ha! "simply". Fools! that's like "fall in love with yourSELF" -- it you could do THAT you wouldn't need the help....) rewire the brain, train yourself to do different things, learn new things, break the indelible pattern....the brain, you see, gets accustomed to doing the same things over and over again so love with people who are cruel to you becomes comfortable because, well, that's what's always happened. Think of it as muscle memory of an emotional kind.

This "just think of something else" theory is probably a good idea and I am no doubt oversimplifying the theory of this book to the point of insult but it is so WASP-oriented, so unnatural a response, I find myself slipping off the premise. It is also a theory oddly reminscient of the ex's go-to reaction to absolutely anything emotional. Eg.: "The smell of roses always makes me sad." "Stop smelling them then." We call this "being Yorkshired", Yorkshire being where he says he learned this bit of emotional wisdom.

I am also reading Soul Murder Revisited, which I bought by mistake (who knew there would be TWO books with Soul Murder in the title? happily, both by the same man so....) and this is striking closer to home. Being in a bad relationship with someone devastatingly cruel is masochism, and masochism is akin to having Stockholm Syndrome. Through long experience you come to side with those who hurt you, you come to believe you deserve it. In fact the idea that you don't is not just absurd and laughable but angry-making. A sadist destroys because that is more bearable than feeling vulnerable to love, and frankly anyone who loves him, TRULY loves him, is an idiot anyway because he is unlovable.

Yup, it's all a sickness. Maybe it would be better to eat pastry in Rome. It may not be the cure but it's a better diversion.