So the great affair is over but who­ev­er would have guessed
It would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unim­pressed

On a sleep­less night in Paris, I came upon the sud­den real­iza­tion that the last thing I should be think­ing of was a per­son I had­n’t spo­ken to in more than half a year.

It brought to mind some­thing Jason told me once, about a pol­i­cy his life-coach has for his ses­sions (which are very for­ward-focused): if you bring up some­thing neg­a­tive from the past three times, the life-coach would end the work­ing rela­tion­ship cause it’s in indi­ca­tion that you’re hold­ing on to some­thing that keeps you from mov­ing for­ward.

So there’s three things you can do:

• change the sit­u­a­tion
• change your­self
• noth­ing (which implies that you stop bring­ing it up, because you’re not doing any­thing to improve the sit­u­a­tion)

For so long, hope meant that I’d been try­ing to change the sit­u­a­tion. And when I final­ly, final­ly, final­ly under­stood the futil­i­ty of it all, I knew I had to change myself, and come to terms with what I did­n’t seem capa­ble of accept­ing. Being in anoth­er coun­try, sur­round­ed by an indul­gent, hedo­nis­tic cul­ture and filled to the brim with hap­pi­ness, was exact­ly what I need­ed to gal­va­nize myself into that change, and end things on my terms.

I’ve been set­tling back into my reg­u­lar life, and I don’t feel much of any­thing now, except free. Like I’m final­ly in con­trol, above water, instead of tread­ing it.