This blog post has been inspired by the book “THIS IS ME LETTING YOU GO,” a series of honest and poignant essays by Heidi Priebe on letting go of her ex.
To my ex, I finally wish you well.
TOXIC LOVE
Ex,
Your presents usually stay with me for months, even years. I know this because we broke up many times before.
This time was permanent, and it was me who let you go.
All the times, I allowed you to leave traces of poison in my soul. The more I got of you, the more I was frail or intoxicated.
The kind of love you never want to live in again.
I question how love can hurt so much, but it does. I loved you and all parts of you. Unfortunately, they leave out this fierce love in romance novels and Disney movies, and that love can be fatal. Even the pursuit of it can become deadly.
I want to tell people I want to live this love again because of all the valuable lessons I learned and how I came out of it stronger, more in love with myself, God and the world.
While all those things are true, I want to tell them I wish I never met you.
Not that I hate you, wish you wrong. But, no, that is not it; it’s because those years were the hardest on my mind, body and soul.
I thought I wasn’t going to make it, our relationship brought me face to face with death, and death seemed sweeter than life.
We can’t say these things out loud, but I want to. I want you to know I do wish I never met you.
But then
I won’t have the lessons.
LETTING YOU GO
People think letting go is easy; give it up to God, they say. But then your mind goes on a loop, and you have no idea what the word Surrender even means; you question if God is even listening to you.
My whole world changed in what seemed like overnight, I had no idea when was my last meal, what day of the week it was, and I had no idea how living without you and the future I built in my head was now gone.
How was I going to rebuild a life that, for so many years, revolved around you?
Then one night, I prayed to release you from my life, home, soul, mind and body.
Slowly I allowed God to take over, to move things in place so that letting you go would be easier this time.
Letting you go is a process of broken, hellish memories intertwined with lush moments of laughter, a warm hug, and spur moments of joy together.
You never know which memory will project a tear or maybe one that will make me miss you in a melancholy kind of way.
Letting you go has moments of anger, too, one that I use for fuel to get over hell and into a more peaceful state.
Letting you go never came in a fixed set of stages; this time, I had no blueprint but a will to make it out alive.
But I did it; I let you go.
WHEN MISSING YOU BECOMES ENOUGH
It’s a lonely and tired Friday night, and I miss our Friday nights with awful Chinese food.
I will think of you in odd moments, like when I see a dessert or food we both enjoy or when my dog does something I know you will laugh at.
I will think of you, miss you, and then remember you.
I get glimpses of our past, of how I felt around you, scared, nervous, unsure, unloved, afraid.
I say a silent prayer that God gave me the strength to walk away for good.
As time went on.
Missing you becomes enough. Until one day, I noticed I didn’t think of you.
HEALING
Healing comes in phases, somedays I wish you would suffer, and other days, I pray to God that I overcome this heartache.
I struggle at first, like it’s hard to breathe, then I slow down my days until they seem endless.
Then with the grace of God, I slowly move.
I search for a therapist, maybe a life coach.
Buy about five books online to understand my pain.
I have now become active in my healing journey. Fortunately, I refused to stay, suffering much longer.
I go back and forth with my healing; I gave up drinking, got back into fitness, improved my sleep, got off of medication, and my faith got restored.
Sometimes I took two steps forward and made three steps backward, but I didn’t give up.
Whatever I did try to do didn’t do; I took an active step into my healing journey.
Healing became my number-one priority until I was ready to date again.
Healing from heartbreak is not as unpopular as it may seem; most people don’t discover the unhealed parts until they deal with a loss.
You were a stepping stone into my healing journey, and I will never forget all the lessons I gained.
You brought to light the darkness in me, the shadow parts that mistreated you at times and hurt you out of pure anger; no, I was not a victim. I stayed too long in a place that was not meant for me, wishing for you to love me when I needed to love myself and move on from a relationship that was not a fit for us.
You and I were never compatible, but we were necessary.
DATING AGAIN
Dating again after the pain is not the easiest thing to do.
It took months before I was okay with dating.
I had to remind myself that doing the healing work was my responsibility, not the person coming in, I had to remind myself that I was in control, that my moment of horror in the past had no weight, but I should be wary of the red flags, that I also need to look out for green ones.
I had to remind myself not to look for you in the men I would date.
They were not going to hurt me intentionally, and they were not out to get me, and I also had to be mindful of my unhealed parts bleeding into someone else.
Because while you hurt me, you were also hurt by me.
I was no longer in the game for “hurt people, hurt people.”
That’s why it took months before I was okay with dating; the last thing I wanted to do was bleed onto someone else.
I prayed every night, every morning until I knew it was okay to let love in again.
It was scary, exciting, and overwhelming to date again.
NOTE TO READERS
Not all of us suffer from bad breakups, yet some of us, like myself, may have found ourselves in a break-up that we thought they would never get over.
I did the work to get over a toxic relationship.
This does not mean I still don’t have days where my old way of thinking and behaving shows itself.
I wouldn’t have been able to find this love, peace, and happiness had I not taken the time to work on myself and ask myself what I wanted regarding a romantic relationship. Not only what I wanted but how I showed up in the relationship.
I had to take accountability for the shit I served in the relationship.
I had to come clean as much as I loved the idea of me and my ex working things out. There was no magic spell or love potion on this earth that was going to make him love me and make me respect him.
Ultimately, I knew that letting him go was a matter of life and death for me; I chose life and walked away.
But I took four times of hurtful break-ups to walk away. After that, I could no longer be stonewalled or abandoned by myself or anyone again.
If you or anyone you know is going through a loss, know that it takes time, and there is no fixed amount of days we can give ourselves to overcome the loss, but what we can do is heal, pray and try our best with what we have.
I highly recommend THIS IS ME LETTING YOU GO in the audio format.
We have lonely nights when we go through a breakup; this was comforting to listen to while I stayed in bed, wishing the pain would stop.
Breakups are never easy, that is for sure, but we can make it a lot better if we find the right books, people and therapy/coach.
I should also mention that Praying in these dark times is one of the biggest tools that got me out of suffering.
What has helped you get through a breakup?
Turning Pages 