By: McKenna Leavens
Consider the gravity of these three words… falling in love. Something everyone wants to do or has done, and according to the research on TheChicDaily, 67% of you have been “in love” while another 82% of you have had your heartbroken.
Everyone addresses the notion of falling in love but rarely do we address falling out of love. We see it in movies all the time, they practically give us a road map on how to fall in love, but how do we deal with the aftermath of it all? What do we do when things go wrong? What do we do when the person we fell in love with turns out to be the person who we also fall out of love with?
Well, unfortunately, this person I’m talking about is usually referred to as our ex. Yeah I know, I really hate that word. Breakups already suck enough and then you have to label this person who you once thought was your forever with a name that’s one syllable; “ex” it’s brutal.
I experienced this for the first time last summer and let me tell you it was hard… painfully hard. Someone I talked to every single day for almost two years became a stranger. This person I shared my life with, my deepest darkest secrets, my passions, and my pain just went away; like I said falling in love is the easy part, it’s the falling out that takes some work.
It’s not the initial breakup that’s hard, it’s everything that comes after. We are expected to move on with our lives, carry on with our day. The world doesn’t stop just because you feel like yours is ending. So I have an idea, what if after a breakup we feel all the pain, we endure it and we take it in day by day, we actually allow ourselves to grieve?
Yes, grieve. You can grieve people who are still alive, as a matter of fact, it is essential to grieve your past relationships. Especially for a lot of you who were with someone for two or more years, that’s a long time to be in a relationship. Your whole life becomes intertwined with your partners.’ Going through and unraveling each memory is brutal, but it’s necessary when beginning the moving on process. Trust me I know, I wasn’t myself for two weeks, I still feel like my world is upside down.
But that’s the thing… it is. I was with my ex for almost two years and now I’m not, it’s uncomfortable and painful. It’s also enlightening and beautiful. I get to find out who I am without him, and so far I’m pretty awesome and so are you. The number one thing that got me through the hard times was realizing that no matter how much I loved him or the relationship I had to love myself more. I chose myself, and I vowed to continue to choose myself every day even if he didn’t.
Start to replace things you used to do together by doing it independently or with a friend. Make new memories in place of that person. Remind yourself every single day that you are beautiful, lovable and strong. Remind yourself that one day you will wake up and be okay, you’ll feel whole again and the best part of it all is that you will have gotten through it, without him or her. You will have gotten through this immense amount of pain all by yourself.
Be kind to yourself, love who you are because the only thing we can do when we fall out of love is fall back in love but this time fall in love with who you are, that’s most important.
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