Let it go

Forgive your ex (and forget them if necessary.)

*Originally started writing this in 2019.

Writing has always been the hardest thing for me to start and easiest thing for me to do as soon as I finally start. I have avoided it for a long time because I knew I would have to think about and feel everything that has happened all over again. Writing is the last piece of the puzzle in the moving on process, so here goes.

You know when you’re a kid and you think you’ll have an amazing life once you’re 16, then it’s 18, then it’s 21, then it’s “for sure” by 25. You think you will have found your perfect job, perfect soulmate, perfect house, and have magically become filthy rich, and can throw on any shirt and pant combo and give off effortlessly cool energy.

Then that age gets pushed back further and further until you realize you’re still the same you in a lot of ways at all these ages, and none of those big items on your bucket list have happened yet.

Surprise, surprise.

Rarely do any of us reach these imaginary finish lines exactly when we thought we would, if ever. There is no “ahh, I have finally won at life. I can now feel peace for the rest of my days.” There’s always total shit parts. We just become better equipped at not letting them ruin the other parts of our life.

These last X (fill in your personal number, mine is 6) years have been rough. I didn’t think they had been that rough until I gathered the courage to start seeing a therapist again and during our first session she said, “you’ve been through a lot of trauma.”

For too long, I thought trauma had to be extreme to be substantial. Like, getting your limbs ripped off by a shark. I would tell myself “Okay, little bitch baby. People have it way worse than you. You have not experienced real trauma. You’re fine. Grow up.”

Let’s start at the beginning of the end…

I moved halfway across the country in 2016. Got to Austin on a Friday and got dumped on the following Monday. On the 4th of July, nonetheless. She wanted to be free. And freedom ain’t free. (I said to myself, crying in bed watching Jim and Pam clips on loop.)

I’m going to write a future post about how relationship arcs like Jim and Pam and Ross and Rachel are fucking toxic and are love stories that aren’t actually love stories that I now loathe.

This is the tricky part. I knew deep down, we weren’t going to work out in the long run. We had been our worst selves with and to each other. We wanted different things.

Did it hurt when, less than a year after breaking up, she was already engaged and living with a taller, thinner, seemingly perfectly put together version of me? MAYBE. I don’t know. Yes. Yes, it did. I cried in a dirty crowded bar bathroom when I found out.

But, it began to hit me, we tried for years to make something “good” into something “great.” Fighting all the time and having to force things to work with a partner you’re supposed to spend the rest of your life with doesn’t sound like my ideal future.

Things began to become clearer. I wasn’t heartbroken over missing out on my future spouse; I was heartbroken over missing out on my best friend’s life going forward.

I don’t think many of us are capable of planning to build a future with someone for years and then instantly switch those feelings off and be just friends. We had been through too much together. We had to go our separate ways.

The hardest part of ending a romantic relationship for me has always been the person closest to you becoming a stranger.

Little did I know, I’d have an even shittier 2017 and 2018. And, I’d have to do all of it without her. I was about to lose what felt like my entire support system. My parents’ unexpected and tumultuous divorce, my brother going to prison, my car dying, getting laid off from my job were all events looming around the corner. I’ll save those fun stories for future posts though. 🫠

I don’t let go easily. I’m a packrat. I’m sentimental. I fear change as if it’s a life threatening disease. I had to let go. I was killing myself by playing the “what if” game. 

I let go of trying to figure out if things could have turned out differently, if I wouldn’t have done this, or actually done that. I let go of emotions that felt like an organ made of tangled yarn held in the deepest core of myself. I let go of anger. I let go of hope that we’d ever get back together. I let go of physical possessions connected to the relationship and things that constantly reminded me of her. I had to let go for good.

It was a chapter of my life needing to be closed. A very big chapter. One of the best and worst and most chaotic and meaningful chapters of my entire life.

And so, somehow, on some random day, I started thinking about her less. I looked at her Instagram less. I stopped wincing when I heard her name. I began feeling lighter.

Moving on takes days and weeks and months and years of making a choice to not wallow in regrets over the past. Choosing the present over the past takes practice.

Now - I am only human, so of course, I creeped on wedding photos. This is going to sound like bullshit, but I felt happy for them. In spite of everything wrong in this universe and timeline, two people still found each other. Tears in my eyes, like watching the end of Fleabag season 2 type tears, because they looked so happy.

An obnoxious, too beautiful for words, this better fucking happen for all of us, kind of love.

I often feel dead inside, but deep down I know I’m goo. Very sappy goo. I love love, in all its various forms, even when I do not want to admit it. So, I am going to choose to believe and assume it will work out for me eventually. Even if I doubt it most days.

My person exists. We’ll find each other. Most likely when I’m not obsessing over finding them and least expecting it to happen. Go figure.