Put Down The Ice Cream, You’re Not As Broken As You Think

At some point in your life you will be that girl (or guy, maybe I don’t know) that is laying on the floor of their friends apartment with a bag of flavor blasted goldfish moaning about how he “broke you”. By this point you will have thoroughly convinced yourself that this guy is the only one for you, that you really had something together, and if you write enough poetry about him and passive aggressively post it on Facebook that he will come back to you, ready and willing to give it another try.

First of all, stop. No. Nay. Unless you are some romance unicorn or the girl who gets Justin Long at the end of He’s Just Not That Into You, then this ain’t gonna happen. Actually chances are what you had was 80% fiction, 15% great sex/trying things you’d only read about in Glee fanfiction, and 5% actual connection with this human being. Now don’t get me wrong, your Ben & Jerry’s fueled delusional grieving is normal, acceptable, and an invaluable part of the process. But this can only go on for so long. Whatever poor soul’s stuck talking you down from whatever elevated surface you’ve been standing on can only handle so much, and you can only afford so much Chocolate Therapy. It’s time to start putting yourself back together.

This is different for everyone, and because you’re a special snowflake you need to figure out what works for you. Personally, wiping their existence from your social networking universe has never been particularly helpful. They existed, they were there – you can’t change that they’ve left their mark on you. I don’t mean this literally, if they’ve actually done physical damage there’s definitely like a hotline or something you should be calling. You can reflect, you can rebound, you can take a vow celibacy that lasts until your hot assistant manager offers to give you a ride home, you do whatever you need to. But for god’s sake just do something for yourself that doesn’t revolve around this person.

I could go on about this forever, and probably will, but there’s just one more thing I feel the need to say. A lot of us are operating under the belief that even though this guy has shown every documented sign of being completely wrong for you/the human equivalent of Furbie/a literal sociopath that we are changing him. That we got through to them, just a little bit, and with a little more time we’ll have them buying us flowers instead of Plan B’s and texting us before 2am. Again, this is almost 100% false. I’m not saying that this guy is going to die alone, finally seeing the error of his ways because he’s an unlovable asshole. Chances are he’s going to meet a girl who will change everything for him. She might break him, she might not be aware of his existence, she might think his dick is too small, or she might marry him and have his little blue-eyed cherub babies. Point is, that girl is probably not you. It’s shitty, it’s the worst, it’s not fair, but it happens. Just remember that to someone you will be that girl who changes everything, and you may never know it.