First you’re going to let yourself miss them.

You aren’t going to call them. You aren’t going to beg them. You aren’t going to plead or bargain or negotiate your way into getting back together. You aren’t going to miss them publically or loudly or desperately but you are going to feel it straight through to the core.

You aren’t going to lie to yourself about feeling amazing and fine. You’re going to feel shitty. You’re going to feel lonely. You’re going to curl up in bed with a warm mug of tea and a huge, hollowed-out heart and you’re going to cry for as many nights in a row as it takes. You’re going to keep yourself together on the outside but make no lies to yourself on the inside. You are hurting. You are reeling. You are going through a thing and that’s okay. You aren’t going to deny yourself the feeling of it.

Next you’re going to put yourself together. You’re going to look at all the huge, gaping holes that they left and you’re going to find ways to fill them in. You’re going to start taking a class on the night that was your date night. You’re going to redecorate the apartment in that way they never cared for. You’re going to plan that trip you always wanted to go on, that you never thought you could take by yourself. You’re going to fill your life up to the brim with the new, the unexpected, the unconsidered and the brave. You’re going to let yourself be a bit out of your element, because you know that it will pay off in the end.

You’re going to keep pursuing your interests – the ones they introduced you to, that still sort of remind you of them. You’re going to grow and expand on and continue to learn about those interests, because they matter to you. Because they’re still a part of you, even if it still feels like they half-belong to somebody else. You’re not going to deny yourself growth and advancement on the basis of forgetting someone – you’re going to allow yourself to integrate all that they meant to you into all you are now. You’re going to learn that in time, you will forget that they were ever your gateway at all.

You’re going to move on slowly but love yourself fiercely. You’re going to throw yourself into the all-consuming business of becoming yourself, experiencing yourself, living your life in the way you always wanted to live it, long before he or she ever came into the picture. You’re going to hustle for success and accomplishment – not because you want them to see you do well but because you want to see you do well. Because there’s a whole world out there that is bigger and bolder and infinitely more enticing than the person who left you, and you know it. And you’re not afraid of going for those things you’ve always wanted.

You’re going to live bravely. Celebrate loudly. Love yourself boldly and move on quietly. You’re going to make them miss you by forgetting that you miss them at all. By getting so caught up in your life without them that they cease to cross your mind – until missing them becomes a back-burner that you forget to leave on.

This is how you’re going to make them miss you, but it’s not how you are going to win them back.

They were a chapter of your story once but then the novel went on.

There are new characters now, new twists and turns, new rising plot lines that you never needed them to fill in. Missing them was a discarded chapter that you summarized and closed long ago. Their character mattered once but you have new ones you’ve yet to develop. Missing you will be the last move their character makes.

And then the story will go on without them.