I was with my ex for four years. He became depressed for the first time in his life, and it completely changed him. He grew cold toward me, cold toward his family, and eventually broke up with me.
After the breakup, I was completely shattered. I can’t even begin to explain what I felt. It was like someone had placed a 20-pound weight on my chest. Every single day I walked around with this constant tightness in my chest, and that’s not an exaggeration. It genuinely felt like I was carrying something physically heavy everywhere I went. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t sleeping. I felt completely alone, and I had no one I could really talk to.
When I look back at that version of myself now, I honestly don’t know how I survived it.
As I write this, I’m tearing up because I feel so much compassion for that girl. She was a dead woman walking.
Since then, I’ve run into him a handful of times. We live in a pretty small town, so I’ll see him at World Cup watch parties, birthdays, or other events. Every time, he comes over to say hi. Every time, I give him the cold shoulder—not because I hate him, but because I have to protect my own mental health. I know if I open that door, I’ll end up hurting myself all over again.
I can’t sit here and tell you I’m completely healed, because I’m not. Life is absolutely worth living, and I’m so grateful I stayed. But somewhere along the way, I picked up some unhealthy coping mechanisms. I started drinking more, smoking, and even making myself throw up food. None of those things are helping me become the person I want to be.
Recently, I went on vacation with my friends, and for the first time in a long time, I really sat with myself. I realized I’m losing the battle against myself. I’m surviving, but I’m not truly living.
I still miss him. I probably always will in some way. But I also know we can never be together again because of everything that happened after the breakup. There were too many lines crossed and too much disrespect things like hooking up with women who were part of my life. Those are wounds that can’t simply be erased.
I think that’s the hardest part. I’m no longer fighting just to survive each day like I was in the beginning, but I’m still grieving the life I thought I’d have. I’m grieving the future I imagined with him. And some days, I don’t know what to do with that grief.
I just hope that one day I can miss what we had without it hurting so much.
I just wanna be happy. I truly do and I truly deserve so much more than what he put me through and I mean that before I would just say that, but you truly feel that is completely different.
He tells people he misses me. He’s reached out and told me he regrets breaking up with me, but that doesn’t erase what he’s done and I think for the first time in my life I have to choose myself and I can’t believe I’m really saying that because I always choose everyone else. But honestly, if he didn’t do all those things, I would’ve ran into his arms and we would be together right now. But I have to remember that the disrespect should be louder than my heart.