#23 Thanks for the ex-perience
Sometimes the best action is no reaction at all.
Happy Monday everyone! Time is ticking so fast and next week we are going to commemorate the Indonesia’s independence day! Prepare your flag and pole, do not forget to raise it high at your home starting from 3 days before (this Friday) until 3 days after (next Thursday)!
On the last Saturday Meiska was writing about her keeping hygienic traits and Elsa was writing about her quarter life crisis and beyond. Click here to read it back!
Monday is a #SalMonday for us. Every Monday, we let our friends to give us a theme to write. #SalMonday stimulates us to keep consistently writing and hopefully our readers (yes, all of you!) will be inspired and diversify their point of views.
Today’s #SalMonday is coming from Christoforus Aries Tirta, a.k.a Krisna for Elsa, a.k.a Aries for Meiska. By the universe, we three met in freshmen year. His topic has a context actually (that we do not want to explain further), but well this is his damn topic:
What does a healthy relationship with ex look like?
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Meiska
Aries, Alexa, Elsa, and I were classmates in freshmen year! We hung out together almost every lunch time, and made jokes about every single thing! Aries always made fun of me and treated me like a child haha. We still hung out together as we parted ways because in sophomore year he studied Marine Science and Technology at different and far building (with Alexa) from ours. Once in a wild and random time, Aries took me out for a dinner in the city —yes, our undergraduate building is so far away— to try foods he liked or wanted me to try.
To be honest, I cannot answer this question hahaha! I was single for six years before I met my current boyfriend. Unfortunately, my last relationship did not end in good terms. I think it took more than six months to finally move on and recovered, until another drama involving my ex happened again. Where pretty much every class of 2011 students in my faculty knew. Luckily, it was a short term relationship lol!
But I guess not having a healthy relationship with our exes is a problem anyway. We never get in touch again with them and that could keep us away from experiencing the same thing in the future! I learnt deeper about self-acceptance. Of course it was sucks and felt like I was at the bottom point in my life. But at the end, I embraced them and successfully let them go. And I got to create the best college life moments with my close friends.
It’s also a prove that some things can really be left unsolved. One of those “what the fuck?” moments in life we all gotta go through. Looking back, I gotta say I did not regret anything. As I embraced them hence resulting my very self now; an independent individual. But maybe, a healthy relationship with our ex is a result when both parties accept they no longer can be together. It doesn’t have to be an encounter where both parties talk or have lunch together casually. But when both parties are at state of mentally ready to start a brand new life — a better life.
Elsa
Krisna is my friend since kindergarten. We just parted in senior high school when he went to a boarding school. We met again unintentionally in the university, he was a marine science student and I was a food science student together with Meiska. With him, I had my first and only suspension from a class. In a civic education course, the teacher was annoyed with us talking a lot in our seat, although what we were debating was actually about the good governance and the idealism!
I know he asked this topic not to tease us, but he sought for a solution to make peace with his ex as well (hahahaha I cut your throat!). My relationship with ex boyfriends is not categorized as in a prime health status, but who can define a healthy relationship would be really?
I metaphor a healthy relationship with a healthy lifestyle (that might be close enough!). There are three ways on how to get there in my own case:
Control my nutrition intake
I do not swallow toxins in the relationship with ex. I accept myself that my life has been through good and bad memories, also in related with having a relationship. After all, I would not be myself now without having a life phase to be together with my ex. I even wrote a newsletter, giving a tribute to my three ex boyfriends as the people who influence my life the most. You can read it back here (Krisna would raise a protest if he reads the link because I did not put my ex in junior high school that he made fun with me about).
Be physically active
I am actively seeking for a better physical and mental health. That means, in one side I still maintain my communication with one of my ex’s parents until now, but on the other hand I also block my other ex boyfriends Instagram and Twitter accounts. Somehow I questioned why my ex has a ball to ask for being friend with me still, somehow I actively set my mindset that the past would always be there. To achieve a healthy relationship with ex, it is actually myself who needs to define how do I want to be with them. There are moments I should choose whether I try to clarify things and not to hang them out to dry. There are moments I ask them to clarify and I do not care to be a bit pushy. In the end, I know my condition better than others for the sake of a better emotional being.
Have a good night sleep
I set back and be restful for all things I cannot control. I am grateful to be a 90s generation, in a transition of analog to digital life. That means, mostly I have no contact with my ex boyfriends in social media or any school reunion (thank universe!). I have not any better wish than this.
Tell us how you cope up with your ex after the break up by writing a comment below!
“People can be more forgiving than you can imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what’s bitter and move on” — Bill Cosby
