Back in July, I posted the photo on the left. It was a photo taken 2 days after my breakup with my f
Back in July, I posted the photo on the left. It was a photo taken 2 days after my breakup with my first love. Today, one day short of exactly two months post-breakup, I took the picture on the right.My ex wasn’t only my boyfriend, but my best friend. We got to know each other through school, where we’re in the same program, and it was a beautiful friendship that bloomed into something even more beautiful, but in a different way. When he broke up with me, I was shattered. I was lost and had no way of finding my way back. Until I did. I did have a way. I read books and watched movies and went places that made me feel things. And I cried - I cried so much! I would be laughing so hard that I’d start crying, and those tears of laughter turned into tears of sorrow in the blink of an eye! But you know what? That’s okay. Because he was my first love, and I’m not going to pretend I was okay when it ended. Everyone tells you to just get out there and live it up and “just forget about him! He’s no good for you!” But how do you forget about a person who was everything to you? You don’t. And I refused to pretend I did. I mourned the relationship, but it gave me room to take the love that I had directed at him, and direct it towards myself.Yesterday, I saw him at school. It was my first time seeing him in person since the breakup. We locked eyes across a room for all of two seconds, and he did that awkward closed-lip half-smile you give people when you don’t want to smile but feel obligated to. We all know the one. Then he looked away and walked away. No more acknowledgement than that. Someone I used to know better than anyone else treated me like we were strangers (although it’s not like I was really in an emotional state at that moment to do anything to change that).I went into an empty lounge and I cried. Right into my pasta. Tears and snot dripped all over it. Glamorous, right? No. It felt like moving backwards from the place I was in and nothing about that feeling was glamorous. But breakups aren’t glamorous. So why do we make it seem like they are because we finally have our “freedom”? Why do we convince ourselves and everyone else that we have to be okay ALL THE TIME? I wasn’t okay! And honestly, I’m still not fully okay all the time. But THAT’S OKAY! I loved him in a way that I hadn’t loved someone before, and that doesn’t just go away over a summer. Honestly, it’ll probably never completely go away. Today I saw him again, in one of my classes. Again, no acknowledgement that I even existed. But I’m okay. And if things don’t change within a week, I’ll make them change. I’ll be the bigger person and clear the air. Because that’s another thing about breakups - why should two people who were once so close, act like the other is invisible? They shouldn’t. The point is, your breakup doesn’t define you. The way people treat you doesn’t define you. I am much bigger than the pieces he left me in. And while today was just a tiny step forward in the grand scheme of things, I know I’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. -- source link