All the Best, Noelle

In the first month of college, my boyfriend of two years and I broke up and thought I felt like my world was crashing around me and I had lost my one chance at the perfect life. The ideal love and my best friend. Here is how I moved on or at least am trying …

Denial

One of my favorite stages is when you delete every Instagram photo, memory, app, and song that reminds you of this person. You try to explain to your friend that you are unmoved and indifferent to this person; in fact, you never even cared. This person had absolutely no impact on your life, and a high school relationship has the equivalence of nothing in the grand and overarching scheme of life. 

Here’s the truth. It’s okay to feel unhappy honestly you should you lost someone who had seen you at your best and your worst. You have to allow yourself to feel something because suppressing those feelings only makes you feel them more. So look over those photos, listen to those songs, and look back on those fond memories and not-so-fond ones as well. Just because this person wasn’t yours doesn’t mean they didn’t teach you a lesson on how to be a better person. Life will put so many people in your path each showing you different parts of yourself. So all the good days you had together and all the bad ones too all had a purpose. It’s now your job to change your perception of them. 

The Petty Crime 

When things get so bad, and it can’t seem to get any worse you tend to want the other person to feel just as bad as you do. The seemingly easiest way to do so is what I call the petty crime. Posting a new guy. Saying how happy you are. Showing off this new thing that makes you happy. If we are honest who hasn’t? Half of this I can blame on how engulfed in social media we are. The other half you have to blame on the insecurity of ourselves.

Though you might think this is a way to get you on their mind, why would you want any other person to hurt the way you do? Going through I break-up especially with someone you think at the time is the one is agonizing. Try instead to write it out there is no need to make a public scene of what’s going on because most likely it isn’t how you truly feel. Even though it seems easier to make a simple angry and unthought-over post, it doesn’t fix anything. Take the time to make the harder choice, be the bigger person, and allow yourself to feel sad. I can say from experience that choosing to post and be angry feels amazing and empowering in the moment, when you sit back and think about that choice you feel horrible hurting someone you loved. 

The Rebound

In the moment the rebound will feel like everything you’ve ever wanted and more. He will tell you all the things you want to hear. He will mystically be everything your ex never was. He will like the same music as you, the same shows, the same foods. He was perfect until realization comes in and the veil of rebound falls away. You have absolutely nothing in common. He was for lack of a nicer way to say it a “warm body”. Someone to keep you entertained and distracted from the fact that you lost your person. Not a good choice, because once the honeymoon phase has worn away you realize you are still stuck on the same guy as before. 

Here’s the fix. Instead of finding a rebound person find a rebound hobby—something you have always wanted to learn or try or do. Embrace your creativity, longing, and drive, find a skill you can hone in on, and make yours. Think about why you haven’t done them yet. I put in place a thought experiment by a great philosopher Nietzsche. The “Heaviest Weight” is gone, if you are told that you only get one life, and it is the one you have created. You are now told that you have to relive this life over and over again. Would you do anything now to change what you have done in the past? This whole elaborate thought experiment’s goal is to say “The time is now”. If you aren’t happy change and do and explore. 

The New Girl

Everyone gets curious about what your ex is up to. When you find it hurts. Not only do you see they have moved on but seeing their friends and family follow them, like their photos, and comments, is even worse. The idea of feeling replaced by everyone in your little world is not only hurtful but also scary. You begin to compare yourself to her. She’s prettier than you, smart, everything you aren’t. They fit together perfectly.

In a perfect world of course you were the only one out there for your ex, but in reality, you have to accept that maybe you weren’t. As hard as that is it’s true, maybe this new girl won’t be perfect for him and maybe it’ll be a quick fling, but maybe this is truly the person for him. They don’t fight as much, they have the same morals, they want the same things out of life. It is okay to feel sad about it, it is okay to want to cry and scream and punch the air for hours. You have to then think this same thing applies to you. So instead of stalking and looking into everything she has you don’t think about all the things that make you uniquely you. There is someone out there for you and maybe this new girl is the someone for your ex but, you are someone meant for another guy too. As sappy as it sounds and as much as you don’t want to hear it there is a person out there for you, you just haven’t found them yet. 

The Blob

According to Susan Wolf a very famous and also truly intelligent philosopher, the blob is one of the three meaning-less lives. The blob’s life has no drive it is not what you would say unpleasant but also not pleasant. This phase not only drives you to sit on the couch and watch hours of How I Met Your Mother but it also encourages you to give up on yourself. The blob is relentless, it engulfs you. You have no feeling about evidently. 

The blob in my opinion is a needed phase it is okay to take solace in stillness. This nothingness can allow you to look at your actions from an unemotional standpoint. Wolf says that this is meaningless life and yes I agree if you spend every waking moment for the rest of your life just cruising through not caring, what’s the point? But this mini speck of time for a couple of days allows you a break from the crazy emotional roller coaster you have been thrown through. It’s okay to not want to go and hang out with friends for a day or two, and they will understand. Allow yourself a moment to yourself to just be still. 

Acceptance

Once you have gone through all the seven stages of grief worked out every problem in your head and eventually accepted that this one beautiful relationship is over. Finally, you can move on and start fresh. You must be still learning from the past but even more important that you don’t harp on it. You made so many mistakes but you have now taken the time to accept them. Allow yourself to laugh a little, smile when you see something that reminds you of them, and look back knowing that everything is going to be okay. 

The Crash-out

You think you have finally gotten over them, but all of a sudden you see something that reminds you so much of them that for some reason everything you worked through slaps you right in the face again. The crash out! The time when your body and also your brain work together to attack every part of your heart. Every dream you have is about you two and when you wake up you have to come to terms that it is gone. Every moment you’re awake you wish you weren’t because it seems like your ex has somehow taken control of your mind, he has somehow taken over every nook and cranny of your thought, but when you are asleep you have to remember when you wake up the dream also come to haunt you. You analyze everything you have ever done wrong and it seems like the failure of the relationship was you. You also for some odd reason can’t find one thing wrong that your ex ever did, so obviously you must have been the catalyst to all the problems. 

So what do you do? This is a question I still have to figure out for myself. You have to remember that everyone is so different just because your ex has moved on and seems to be doing great, or that your friends have already moved on from their exes, it doesn’t mean that you are destined to do the same thing. You can feel sad for as long as you need honestly that is how you know that a good thing has come to an end. Stoics like to say that we should only be upset at the thingswe can control and I tend to disagree. You can take the time you need, you can rant to your friends and family. We have to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we can’t expect that everyone is the same. So though maybe you aren’t over him today, or tomorrow, or in a month, you will be. It just takes time. A lot of time. 

All the best, Noelle.