How Do You Redefine Yourself After Someone Leaves?

How do you rid yourself of someone? How do you wipe yourself clean of someone who once defined who you were? Everything is gone; you have no physical evidence left of the person your universe used to revolve around. Pictures and messages have been deleted, sweatshirts, CDs and loose socks have been returned, and the spots on the wall where pictures of the two of you used to hang are empty. To an outsider, that person never existed.

The problem, though, is that even though you’ve created the illusion that this person never had an impact on your life, the hard reality is that they did. You are pieces of the person who left you, and that’s something you’ll have to deal with every day of your life.

You like the things you like, laugh at the things you find funny, and have the opinions you do because those are things they liked, they laughed at and they believed. Before that person entered your life, you were an empty shell of a person, unrefined, uncultured and unappealing. But then they walked into your life, and filled it with meaning. That person showed you things you never thought you’d like, and created a newer, shinier version of your old self. You walk around now as the person they created, and you can’t get rid of that.

How do you redefine yourself? How do you untangle your life from theirs? It should be easy, especially when they’ve already done it. They had an unfair advantage, though; while you were happily and hopelessly in love, they had already begun carefully picking up the pieces of their life, tucking them safely away from where you could find them, and left the pieces of yours scattered about while you unsuspectingly smiled at them.

But you have to pick those pieces up eventually, because the longer you leave them on the ground, the more time they have to disintegrate, and soon, they’ll stop looking they way they used to. You have to glue yourself together again, because if you don’t, soon you won’t recognize who you are anymore.

You’ve got to realize that, no, you aren’t pieces of that other person who is no longer there with you; they took those fragments and kept them for their own and left you with you. You are yourself, shiny and new. They may have helped mold you along the way, but they weren’t the only one — you had help from friends you’ve met along the way and family members too. They weren’t the sole creator of your personality. You are you and it’s time to embrace it.