Where do I begin? Without giving too much personal information, it has been two months since I broke up with my boyfriend of two and a half years, who was also my best friend for two years prior. It really does not matter why or how it happened, because it did.
Nothing will change that.
With experiencing a breakup comes lots of mourning and grieving. You grieve the loss of so many things –– not just the relationship but everything that came with it: the friendship, the partnership, the dependence, everything.
You are mourning someone who is still alive, someone who is still out in the world living their life, just not a part of yours.
It is normal to live in denial for some time. Not the kind where you simply do not accept that you aren’t together and try to act like you are, but the kind where you still feel shocked — you can’t believe it is actually over and that this is real.
Eventually, you can accept that it’s real but still don’t want it to be.
While I am still very much in the healing and grieving process, I do feel that I am in a position where I can give advice. I am not far enough out to know how effective this advice is long term, nor do I really have any answers, but I have always been the advice friend — helping those around me through their hardships.
Something valuable that I bring to the table as this friend is my insight and perspective. In other words, I am a deep thinker and eager learner, causing me to dive into new experiences and perspectives. This includes constantly searching through Pinterest for new quotes and finding their underlying meanings and relatability and further passing this onto my friends.
Advice is so much easier to give than to take. I just have to keep on reminding myself of how I would guide my friends and that I deserve the same that they do. It is so difficult to follow your head and not your heart, but reading and processing Pinterest quotes helps me to do so.
Two of the most significant quotes that I have found and that have helped me are the following: “grief is love’s souvenir,” and “the love you gave was never a waste.”
Grief is so normal. You just lost your everything –– why wouldn’t you be broken? This quote allowed me to look at it in a more grateful way: My grief is proof of my love. It shows how I had something that made letting go so hard. I had something so special and real, and this sadness is proof of that. I may no longer have the person or the relationship, but I have this grief — something to have and to hold that emphasizes what once was. While this mindset does not eliminate the pain, it validates it. It shows us that what we are experiencing is normal and valid.
No matter what happens, no matter if the relationship ends, nothing can take away the love that you gave.
It is so easy to get caught up in the anger and the sadness that you can regret ever giving so much of yourself to someone. But reality is, there is no going back, so why not take pride in the love you gave? At the end of the day, you lose the person, but you never lose your love. It remains yours and you get to keep it to take pride in and ownership over.
This is something that has become so significant to me. While no one is perfect, I am so confident in the love that I gave and how passionately and wholeheartedly I loved. Nothing and nobody can ever take that away from me. My love speaks to my character and is what makes me special, therefore, it was never a waste.
Everybody is deserving of love. Regardless of the fact that we are no longer together, my ex-boyfriend deserved my love, and I am so glad I was able to give it to him — that the both of us can always look back on my love and see how it made the relationship so great.
I am still healing and adjusting, learning to live this new life of mine. However, I do have so many insights I want to share and explore, for both my own benefit and to hopefully help others. I am excited to continue this new journey — and to share it.
