Note: Upon drafting this I realized how much I sound like an emo teenager. I decided to post it anyway incase someone finds it relatable.

Recently I have started to wonder criteria should be used to measure my recovery from traumatic heartbreak. The ideas that come into mind are as follows:

  • Gradually Subsiding Self-loathing: Though a baseline amount of self-loathing has existed since the beginning of time, I sincerely hope that most of my current self-loathing will eventually dissipate. Either that or the higher amount is the now new normal and I will just have to deal with it. The self-loathing makes me become more forgiving of flaws in others, because I know firsthand the depths of depravity that can be induced by severe sadness.

  • Re-emergence Hope in the Future: I optimistically tell myself tomorrow, if I can survive until then, will lead to less pain. Although I already feel OLD and FILLED with MOLD, a friend of mine recently told me that "black don’t crack, and asian don’t raisin". This feels slightly fetishistic but I might as well use it to my advantage if life is forcing my hand. I start to empathize more with glucose companions, as a fraction of them may just be formerly kind souls, tormented and corrupted into robbing cradles by the suffering they faced during their younger years. All this said there is also something to be said about keeping death in sight to be more mindful of life.

  • Unclouded Evaluations of Others: I am the type of person that is only capable of serial dating, which means I leave all my eggs in one basket and cry about it when it doesn't work out. A more multi-dating approach is too mentally exhausting, and is not necessarily more efficient because multi-dating is technically (or one would hope is) round-robin rather than true parallel. I am currently working towards trying to evaluate new people based on their own personal set of attractive qualities, instead of purely measuring code distance to the previous. I suppose full recovery is when the former starts to occur naturally, and without significant mental energy expended.

  • Blog Post Frequency: I have unfortunately discovered the secret ingredient to prolific blog writing is profound sadness. So much so that that if I stop posting it means I lost the will to live or no longer possess the critical mass of sadness needed to write quickly.