What To Do When You Realize They’ve Moved On For Good

Draw a bath at 7:14 PM and commit yourself to staying in and feeling sorry for yourself. Forget to pay attention to the temperature and end up dunking yourself into something near boiling. Ignore it when your skin starts screaming at you. Hope that the version of you that emerges is somehow detoxified. Lighter. Better. That whatever you will exist in one, two, three hours won’t be hung up on the fact that they’re not hung up on you at all. Spill wine on yourself and watch it run down your chest into the water. Remember that everything can be cleansed, even you. Think about what it was like to be heartbroken, and in turn, what it was like to break their heart. Wonder, admittedly sadistically, how long it took for them to decide they were over you. Try to picture in your mind how they described you to other people. Imagine all the adjectives they put next to your name over the years. Close your eyes and try to remember what your name sounded like when they said it, just for a second. Try to pinpoint the emotion you’re feeling because as much as you’d like to put Lorde on repeat and be heartbroken, be devastated, it’s not that simple. It’s not really sad, it’s not really anything. It just sort of…is. Sit in bed and watch the hours pass, only illuminated by the glow of a computer screen. Try to write something, make something, become something that matters. Realize how sobering it is to come to terms with the fact that you don’t matter to them anymore. That promises aren’t forever. That someone’s world will turn without you in it. That you have to swallow whatever narcissistic pride somehow deemed yourself, ‘The One That Got Away’ and realize, you’re not a ‘one’ at all. Read the entire Wikipedia article about the multiple universe theory and try to picture one where you ended up with them. But realize that as much as you’re obsessing, you can’t picture it. That you don’t remember what it sounded like when they said your name. That you’re not their one, and that they’re not yours either. That the longevity of a love doesn’t determine it’s reality, it’s magnitude. And that moving on from it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. That it doesn’t matter. And realize, that that fact doesn’t have to be something to be sorry over. That it’s worth moving past. That it’s okay. That it’s not really anything.

That it just is.