The first time that I got dumped, I spent the following day pounding mimosas from a six pack can that one of my girlfriends bought at the liquor store up the street. My sunglasses covered my red puffy eyes and the alcohol helped numb the pain. It was sweet and sour and gave me a headache kind of like my ex.
I finally understood what Sheryl Crow was saying, the first cut truly is the deepest. My first cut hurt like hell. The agnozining, mind numbing and dizzying pain had me feeling like I couldn’t breathe and that I was never going to recover. What I didn’t understand then and what I learned over time was that it really wasn’t the end of the world. I survived. My wounds healed and I’m still standing.
Let yourself feel and take your time
It’s surely not easy to love yourself through the process of grief and at first it’s incredibly confusing. Taking care of yourself, a task that you used to do so easily, suddenly seems impossible. I spent a lot of time with my open wounds without a clue in the world as to how I was going to clean them. I held on to his old T-shirts, refusing to throw them away. Read and reread old text messages we sent to each other. Replayed memories we shared, like a broken record, in my mind. Walked by places we went on dates. Pounded alcohol. “Drop[ped] it like it’s hot” at the club with my girlfriends. Ate a lot some days and nothing on others. Cried— a lot. Listened to sad songs about heartbreak. Had rebound sex with Tinder boys. Got a tattoo. Made out with a stranger. Got pissed. Burned his shirts. Went hard at kickboxing class. Screamed into my pillow and vented the hell out of all of my angry feelings to anyone who would listen about the guy that broke my heart.
It wasn’t pretty. Processing all the ugly and impossible feelings is not pretty and that’s okay because it doesn’t have to be. When I let go of how I thought I should be processing my breakup, when I should be over it, what I should be doing to get over it and what being “over it” should even look like, I gave myself the freedom to feel.
Giving myself that permission to feel whatever I was feeling and to process it however I needed to in the moment was essential. I needed the time to wallow and be upset and miserable and pissed off. I had to let all of those feelings out. It didn’t all happen at once. I moved through the motions of all of my feelings in waves over 6 months. I even dated and had hookups at that time. I thought that meeting someone new or hooking up with someone new meant that I was “over it.” Truth was that there were still some parts of my past that I had to let go and that’s okay. Sometimes there are pieces of our past that we don’t let go of right away, some pieces just take a little bit more time than others. It’s okay.
I’m not embarrassed to admit that it took me almost a year to finally let go of all of the pieces of my previously broken relationship and neither should you. Even if it takes you several years to let go. It takes as long as it takes, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
So what if it takes time? It’s your heartbreak and your healing process—no one else’s.
Releasing my feelings instead of suppressing them was my holy grail and still is to this day, for surviving painful breakups.
Find comfort in small things
It took me a little while but eventually as time went on, I found growth and comfort in the simple things. Things that I liked to do in my everyday routine. Things that I knew how to do and new things I learned how to do. I liked to write. Walk. Be outside. Cook. Binge watch Friends, then Grey’s Anatomy, then The Bold Type, then Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods, Chicago P.D. and New Girl. Work out. Shower- because there is something so powerful and cleansing beyond physical about it. Dance in the mirror to my favorite songs. Listen to the “Self-Love” playlist I made myself. Be spontaneous. Drink excessive amounts of lemonade. Sing along to songs I love, loudly, even though I cannot sing. Clean my apartment. Re-organize my drawers. Buy myself a new comforter- because who doesn’t feel like a new person when they get a new comforter? Nap. Drink more water. Making lists of goals.
Taking a shower and re-organizing my drawers wasn’t a magic fix and it didn’t heal my wounds, but it did make me feel a little bit better. Whatever those feel-good behaviors and activities are for you, embrace them.
Helpful Reminder: You are NOT Alone
I found it incredibly easy to get lost in thinking that I was alone in my pain. But the truth was that I really wasn’t alone. I had so much love surrounding me. We all have love surrounding us. We may not always recognize it, but it’s there and it’s important to remind ourselves of that.
Your journey through this process is going to be hard and I hope that if nothing else, you take away this: you are important, you are loved, you are worthy and you will get through this.