What It Really Means When You Can’t Get Over Someone

They say that in order to get over someone it takes half of the time that you were together to fully move on. So if you were together for a year, you have six months. Three years, a year and a half. A month, two weeks. And so on and so forth.

So you mark the date on your calendar. You buckle in for the ride towards healing that will ultimately end with you not caring about them anymore. You will move on, you will let them go. You will not dwell on it, you will not obsess, you will get over it and you will be fine. You tick each day off on the metaphorical wall, counting down until the day when you’ll be better.

“I have 72 days and then I’ll be okay.”
“In three more weeks I will not miss you.”
“Tomorrow I will be fine.”

And then your day comes. The sun rises on that magical date when it’s been exactly half the length of your relationship so now you will not hurt. Now, today, you will not miss them. It’s the day when you will finally have moved on.

But…you don’t.

You don’t feel better, you don’t feel “free” or “over it.” You still miss them and you still hurt. It’s been days, weeks, months, years but it doesn’t feel like your time is up. No to you, it’s still as palpable as it was seconds after they were gone. To you, no time has passed.

So you run to your calendar, double check your math. Maybe you have another week or another 24 hours to go. Maybe tomorrow you’ll be fine. Yes. That’s it. Tomorrow you will be over it. You just have one more sleep.

But then that tomorrow comes and…nothing is different.

And another tomorrow comes, still the same.

Countless tomorrows come and go and the sun rises and sets and you feel stuck in an endless cycle where you are completely incapable of moving on, of moving forward. You look at yourself, look at this vicious unending hurt you are stuck in and wonder if this is just your new reality. If this is the world that you’re destined to be stuck in forever.

But the thing about moving on, the things about getting over people is there is no one-size-fits-all way to do it. There is no recipe, no formula, no magical way that you can wake up one morning and stop caring.

You can Google “How To Get Over Someone” and read article after article about healing until your eyes threaten to dislodge from your body. You can take up yoga, meditate, try to get to a peaceful place where you are your “best self” and do so many sun salutations you give yourself whiplash. You can fake it till you make it plastering a giant smile and repeating, “I’m fine” until your voice gives out. You can give yourself an end-date, say, “This is the last day I will be sad,” and just blindly believe that will work. But reality is none of those things make you actually over someone.

And the truth about not being over it, about not moving on, about not being able to let someone go is simply, because you aren’t ready to.

It means you aren’t ready to face a world where you will be okay without them. You aren’t ready to see the instances where they were not right for you. You are not ready to exist as a me and not a we, or as a single instead of a couple. You’re not ready to move on because you’re still focused on your now, and not your future.

And you know what? That’s okay.

It’s okay to feel how you feel even if “they” have dictated that you should be over it by now. It’s okay to not know when you’ll be free and have moved on. It’s okay to feel stuck and depressed even along a journey to find your best self. It’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to not be over it, it’s okay to NOT be okay.

It’s okay.

Because one day, you will be. There’s no way to know when, but one day you won’t feel like this. One day you’ll wake up and not think, “Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow.” One day you’ll open your computer and instead of Googling “How long can I be sad about my breakup?” you just check your email with no expectations. One day you’ll meditate and not be fixating on them. One day you’ll say, “I’m fine” and mean it.

One day instead of looking at them and instead of seeing the center player in the plot line of your heartbreak, you’ll just see a person.

One day you’ll be over them. Promise.

And who knows. Maybe it will be tomorrow.