On Getting Over Someone
At 11:00pm on February 14 – Valentine’s Day – of 2019, I find myself asking:
How do you get over someone?
Getting over someone looks different for every person who suffers from a broken heart. But this is what it looks like for me:
It looks a lot like sobbing in a parked car, face buried in your hands that hold a pool of your tears, crying out to whatever higher power exists or doesn’t exist and begging for the belief that better is coming.
It looks a lot like screaming in anger when you’re alone, straining to convince yourself that you hate the person who broke your heart, using as many profane words as your hurting brain can conceive to describe them (asshole, dick, fucking piece of shit…).
It looks a lot like fake laughing with friends and coworkers and lying when they ask how you’re doing… replying “good,” when in reality everything inside you is shattered into a billion pieces like a destroyed stained glass window.
It looks a lot like thinking you’re mentally insane because you find yourself simultaneously hating every ounce of his being and thinking he is the greatest person in the world. You both want nothing to do with him and crave to be with him. You want to ask if he will enjoy the unusually warm February night with you by walking around the Arboretum. You want to call him and tell him the little things you always told him about, the things you both got excited about, but you also never want to hear his fucking voice ever again.
It looks a lot like doubting everything you thought to be true. Doubting yourself. Doubting what you had with him. Doubting your perception of reality. Not just past reality but present reality too. You blame yourself for everything and want to kill yourself because how could you have believed a lie and fallen so hard for someone that would fall for someone else? How could you pour so much of yourself into someone that would take it all then leave you? How could you be so stupid?
And it looks a lot like leaning on your friends. The friends you don’t deserve. The friends who have been there all along, but who you let slip away unnoticed because you were so caught up in this man who you let steal your heart. These are the ones who never left you. The ones who always believed in you, the ones who have always seen and known your worth, and who told you and treated you like you were enough.
It looks a lot like convincing yourself that by yourself, you are still whole. Convincing yourself that you will be okay, which looks a lot like going on drives and late night walks, getting tattoos, listening to music that YOU love, and planning to move to Europe.
And it took this, this heartbreak, to bring you here. To bring you to this place of realizing your worth and wholeness. The pain is crippling, but the resulting growth is liberating. So even here, amidst the crying, screaming, laughing, doubting, and hurting… even here, there is still light.
And by holding on to this light, which exists both in your friends and in yourself, while you trudge through the darkness of tears and nightmares and tragedy, is how you get over someone.