It's OK to miss him...

I've often thought that society puts too much pressure on us to live the life that they want us to live. A life where "what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger", which means that you just have to pick up and move on. But moving on, in any sense of the word, isn't easy. Take for instance a move, the most literal sense of the word. One has to sort through everything that they want to keep or throw away. Once you do that it's time to pack all of your belongings into boxes, put them on the moving truck, pray that your belongings make it there all in one piece, unload, unpack, and reorganize everything back to where you want it to be in your new house.

Relationships endings are much the same. One has to decide what you want to keep as memories from the relationships, whether pictures or the stupid hat you bought on vacation. Once you make that decision, it's time to start packing away parts of the relationship. No you're no longer in a relationship, what was once an RSVP for two is now an RSVP for one, and rituals that once existed no longer do. You then have to put yourself on that truck with your belongings, not the "we" belongings, and move on to your next destination where you will then have to start over again. There will be prayers, begging, pleading, and tears as you make the move and as you hope that you arrive safely and in one piece. Feelings that you buried will be found, much like possessions are found in random places (I once found a cherished hand me down in a garbage can). New feelings will emerge to replace emotions that are fleeting with time. And you'll slowly put your life back together again. Much like a literal move, an emotional move isn't easy, but it's one that you will survive with hopefully a few minor bruises and smashed thumbs.

One of the most helpful things that my counselor told me was this "It's OK to miss him". I've found, for the last few days, that I really miss my ex. I can pinpoint it to this: today makes one year since we met and on the 27th is his birthday. He's on my mind a lot for these two very reasons. I wanted to be spending this day together and obviously birthdays are important to me and I was hoping that I'd at least be the first and last to tell him to have a great birthday and that I loved him. It's hard not celebrating our one year of knowing each other together and what's harder is not talking to him, even though all I wanted six weeks ago was for him to not message me so that I could move on (funny how that works, huh)? It's OK though. I'm not going to feel bad about missing him. I am not going to ask myself "why aren't you over this already"? I am as over it as one person can be. There are going to be days, until I find someone else and feel those feelings again, that I miss him. There are going to be days where I wonder what could have been. There are going to be days that I struggle not messaging him or days where I do and maybe wish I hadn't. But I'm not going to let society, and the inner monologue I've built based on society, make me feel bad. Today, I miss him. Today, I would rather be with him than celebrating Easter alone. And you know, that's OK.