Letting Go of the Internal Destruction From Your Leaving
Moving on in life is about letting go of what is already gone.
It turns out, time doesn’t always heal wounds. Especially those that were charred into our souls by loss of love, the loss of the one person we were the most confident in. The one person who encouraged us to be ourselves and then taught us that ourselves wasn’t enough for their love.
It goes beyond the adage of the “one who got away”. The one that we can’t make love us, they have a funny way of popping up sometimes and ripping any old bandage off our hearts.
In July of 2013, I met the man I thought was the love of my life. Good-looking, sense of humor, a man who embraced life and joked around to avoid looking at the horror of every day. Plus, he was a musician in a local band.
We dated for 10 months and I wanted to go for the rest of our lives. I even kicked a few bad habits when I knew that his job was laying him off and he would have to give up long-ingrained habits. I thought I was being a good partner, he thought it was time to cut me loose as if I had been holding him back.
What followed was a stream of self-destructive choices that would be one half of me for the next two years. I did everything from double my drinking to cutting off my hair to sleeping around. If I thought that it would have any kind of negative effect on him, I did it.
The other half of what I did was what the experts tell you to do- work on yourself and make yourself better. I came up with a list of 100 things I wanted to accomplish in the next year. I included long-forgotten dreams, things that I didn’t have the time to do when I was with him, things that would be just fun to do, and things that included an element of self-improvement. Working on that list is part of what kept me from self-destructing.
Eventually, through months of not seeing him, I thought it was over and dead. Until a common friend had us both over for a pay per view for wrestling. Being close to him again brought back those quick heartbeats and longing for what was no longer there. This was six years after the breakup.
It’s a common debate if exes can be friends after a breakup. I think exes can be friends but only if they had a casual or short-lived relationship. Anything over six months makes it harder. In this case, I knew that it wouldn’t be possible. If anything, his reappearance would take me back to the place where I felt like self-destructing.
I put in an immediate plan of action to counteract this:
- I asked our friend not to throw us together because I knew it would affect me
- I threw myself into another creative project so I didn’t have time to think
- I got busy with trying to become successful at work
- I remembered the reasons why I loved being single: more time to work on goals, living on my own terms, and not owing anyone an explanation.
- I also met a man at work who was designated as my trainer. 12 months later he would become my husband, but that was not something that I had expected to happen.
These strategies worked really well but I wasn’t completely off guard yet. I don’t know that I ever will be.
It took a lot to come back from that relationship. It also took a lot to guard against letting the past affect me six years later. However, the key is boundaries: emotional, mental, and physical- including choosing not to be around them. Setting boundaries for your heart and your time around the other person is crucial in dealing with the heart matters that you know you can’t face on your own willpower.
