Tl;dr: Love heals.
Something that I have learned with a few heartaches and heartbreaks.
A letter to myself:
Being someone who initiates a breakup, and being someone who gets the breakup, well… both of them are hard. Kun fayakun. Whatever the reason is, it probably happens because it is destined to be. You should remember that it should be because of a good reason.
I know it is easy to fall down that slippery slope of thoughts; thoughts like “We were meant to be together,” “S/he was perfect” “If s/he knew how much I care about him/her” “We could make this work if s/he would give me another chance.” Yes, I have had all of them. These thoughts are natural, but they’re not necessarily true. Odds are, the other person had a good reason to break up with you- even if they didn’t tell you what it is. Or, if they did and you think it wasn’t a good reason, well, it must have been to them.
You may never know or understand the reason. For me, this was the hardest part. You have to accept that answers may never come.
No amount of refreshing back old chats and old pictures will help you move on. When they get a new significant other — and they will — no amount of Instagram stalking, jealousy, or judgmental condescension is going to break them up.
The real fact is, even if you have lost the ability to imagine a future without someone in it who is no longer part of your life, you eventually have to come to the realization that the future comes regardless and we need to adjust course accordingly. Some people recommend jumping right back into the dating pool or getting laid as a way of forgetting or moving on, but I do not think rebounding to be particularly helpful or rewarding. To put it into an analogy, covering a grave scar of an accident with solely band-aids doesn't necessarily heal it. It only helps to ward the scar off your sight, but the scar is still there. It heals from within, as the tissue form again if you take care of the scar carefully and whole-heartedly. And it heals by time, gradually recovering back the skin you once had normal.
What I meant… is that I find it’s better to resign yourself to singleness, and allow yourself to feel the pain and the loss of the breakup, and let your feelings take their course. And maybe someday, you realize someone else is making you feel the way that your ex once did — or completely different, but in a good way.
And it is okay to be happy with someone else, even though moving on can sometimes feel like betraying or cheating on the person who broke up with you. You have to realize, though you are used to directing affection and devotion to that one person, you do not owe it to them anymore. They gave you permission to love someone else when they left.
Even so, it is also okay to miss your former lover. It is okay to remember their quirks, their endearing imperfections, and to allow yourself to wonder what life would be like if you would stay together. But after a while, you stop hoping that life will be that way someday, and instead it becomes purely hypothetical.
I guess what I am saying is there is no cure but time, and yourself, though it is often slow and incomplete. You do not wake up one morning and realize you are over your ex.
But as impossible as it may seem right now, you can start moving on a little more each day.
And who knows? Maybe one day, you will look back on that relationship and realize that you are over it, and you will be a stronger person because of it, and you may even be glad it happened.
