How to move on

Or more like, "how do you move on??"

Dear lover,

I’ve been struggling to move on. I think. On the outside, I’ve been completely fine. The constant crying has stopped and the sensitivity is starting to fade. I’ve been going to work as usual, hanging out with my friends as usual, talking to my parent’s as usual. But I still feel your absence in the spaces between. It’s horrible, not gonna lie. The emptiness has never felt so empty before.

Now I understand why everyone’s been telling me to keep busy. Because when I’m not, my mind always finds it’s way back to you. It is both inevitable and incredibly annoying.

Because once I recognize the emptiness, I then feel the stages of grief, as I start to mourn the loss of you just being there. The stages are never in order, of course, because nothing about me leaving has felt orderly or logical. Except the decision to leave itself. Why did I make that decision again? When I’m missing you it becomes hard to remember.

But I always find my way back to that conclusion too. It became too painful to stay, I remind myself. And then the stages of grief happen again, because I have to go through them all in order to actually justify and rationalize my actions.

Sometimes it feels like this: denial, anger, bargaining, depression acceptance. But most days it feels something like this: depression, denial, anger, depression, anger, depression, anger, depression, depression, bargaining, depression, anger, and then maybe some acceptance. But it’s never the same every day.

The only thing that has remained consistent about my “healing” journey is that I’m fucking tired. I wake up tired, and fall asleep even more tired. I started sleeping early just because the emotional whiplash I’ve been going through has utterly worn me out. I hate it. I feel like an open wound that’s never going to close, and anything that reminds me of you is like a little sprinkle of salt being dusted over me.

need one of these right now jesus christ

I don’t feel like myself really, because of all this. I know I’m still somewhere in here, but it feels like someone else is living inside me too. Some kind of grief monster that’s possessing my soul and making me crazy.

Yes, crazy, that’s the word I think perfectly describes how I’ve been feeling lately. I’m out touch with myself just a little bit. I can’t control my thoughts or emotions, and facing them has been something I’ve been dreading rather than accepting. It’s unlike me. I’m usually good at emotional processing, but not this time.

I’ve been acting unusual too. I think everyone assumed I’d be much more… debilitated after what we went through, but I’m not. And that scares me a little, because I’m not sure if I’ve been feeling all my feelings right.

But at the same time, I also feel everything. Maybe I just haven’t shown it, but I know it’s all happening inside my head, and nobody can see it. There’s a lot me and the grief monster have been talking through, and the only way I’ve been able to let it out is through writing.

(I have to let it out somehow otherwise the grief monster will actually drive me insane.)

But I’ve been writing a lot about you, lover. In fact, I’ve been addressing all my journal entries like they’re letters to you. Because I need to find some way to talk to you without talking to you. Because other than me and the grief monster, you’re the only one who really knows what we went through. It makes me feel a bit crazy (naturally), because it’s like I have some imaginary friend at the grown-ass age of twenty-two. Only you’re not imaginary, and we’re not friends. And in reality, all this is just me talking to myself. Over and over and over again.

literally me these days

I think it’s really the only way I can move on: talking. Talking to my friends, talking to my parents, talking to my therapist, talking to my boss… talking to myself, and even talking to you. Anyone who I think will listen (the version of “you”in my head listens). Because it’s too much for me to keep to myself. And sharing all my thoughts about you with the grief monster only makes me feel worse. Someone else has to witness it all too, so that I know I’m not alone.

I really do feel crazy trying to move on from you, lover. Because what we had was so real and now it just… isn’t. But at one point it was. And I feel like I’m going in circles trying to prove it, when I know I should just let it die.

So, how do you move on, lover? How do you make peace with things and let them die? I’ve experienced grief plenty of times, but I still haven’t figured it out yet. And I was hoping you’d have the answers. You seemed to know me so well, I thought you’d understand what I’m talking about here. So, do let me know. Or don’t, since you can’t. I’ll talk things over with my therapist and the grief monster anyways.

Wishing you the best.

♥️,

Amelia.