How Does One Get Over A Love Affair When Every Song, Every Sight, Everything In The World Reminds You Of The Person Who No Longer Loves You?

Today's How-To-Guide subject was submitted by "Anonymous". Very timely question, Anonymous, what with our upcoming show with Naked "Always-Something-There-To-Remind-Me" Eyes.

(If anybody would like to request a How-To guide, just let me know. All topics will be considered.)

How does one get over a love affair when every song, every sight, everything in the world reminds you of the person who no longer loves you?"

1. Wording Matters
Is there a difference between "moving on" and "getting over something"? If there is, or even if it feels like there might be a slight difference, it seems to me that one should just go ahead and pursue "moving on".

"Moving on" requires very little, really. It requires living as you see yourself living. Getting up in the morning, showering, eating fairly well, doing whatever job it is you do, hangin out with friends, walking your chinchilla, watching Lost, and going to sleep. "Moving on" mostly just requires that you go through the motions.

Why burden yourself with the seemingly insurmountable task of "getting over something"? Who's to say that anybody ever actually gets over anything anyway? I've never gotten over the face that the bat made when I sprayed it with Windex and that was what? Twenty five years ago? One doesn't need to get over something. One needs to move on. One needs to span time.

2. Responsibility
However, in the process of "moving on" you do need to accept responsibility. You need to take responsibility for yourself. Sure, the radio is blaring out musical reminders of your past, but it's not the songs' fault that you feel sad or nostalgic or angry when you hear them. You are the one who determines how you feel. Those songs aren't about you or your ex-lover, you are the one putting yourself into them. That's not to say that you should stop doing that, it's just that you should take responsibility for it. You have a say in the matter. The more blame that you put on outside forces, the less you will feel like you have the ability to help yourself. The songs aren't going anywhere. They were always there and they will always be there. It is completely up to you to hear to them with perspective.

3. Time
We all live in chapters don't we? There was pre-school, school, maybe college, maybe this job or that job, this apartment, that house, this city, that valley, that guy, that girl, that pet, the broken leg, the car-less years. Maybe the process of moving on is the process of embracing your chapters. You have been fortunate enough to live numerous lives. Some people live only a few.

These past few years, are one chapter. You've finished it and now it's time for the next. You determine where it goes, what story it tells, how it unfolds, how it adds to the full story, how it leads into the next and the next all the way up to the "about the author" inscription.

Why not begin new chapter like this: In the beginning of October in the year 2006, the leaves were just starting to sift down onto the sidewalks. The pavement felt solid and never ending beneath my feet, but roots had pushed up through it, bending and breaking the sidewalk in impossible ways. I felt like I was outside for the first time in years as the crisp air cooled my ears and cheeks. Smelling a distant wood-fire, I looked up at the sun filtering through the orange and yellow leaves, the sky was enormous and blue and reminded me how the sky has always been enormous and blue and reliable and solid. I put my hands in my pockets and slowed my pace and decided to see my surroundings for what they really were, a crucial part of my life. I didn't know where I was walking. It didn't really matter.