Sometimes, you are not given the gift of closure. Sometimes, you are unable to get over your exes and almosts. And that is okay.
There is nothing wrong with you for occasionally daydreaming about the one who got away even if it happened five or ten years ago. You are allowed to miss old flames. You are allowed to hold a special place in your heart for them.
You might never get over him — but you have to learn to live without him.
You have to follow your passions. You have to spend time with friends. You have to date other people. You have to find new reasons to smile. You have to accept he is no longer in your world.
You don’t have to get over him completely. You only have to accept he is gone, he is never coming back, and you can build a perfectly happy life without him. Once you realize that, it doesn’t matter whether he flickers in your mind every once in a while. There are old friends you miss. There are family member you miss. And there are going to be exes you miss. It is only human.
Stop trying so hard to get over him and feeling pathetic when you fail. You might always have love in your heart for him. But you are not always going to wake up thinking about him. You are not always going to hate yourself for losing him. You are not always going to feel like something is missing from your world without him around.
You will not feel such intense heartache forever. The pain will numb. Time will make it easier to step forward without him.
He might not fade away from your heart completely but he will fade from your mind. You will find yourself thinking about him less and less. You will go hours without missing him and that will turn to days which will turn to weeks.
Of course, you might still feel a pang in your chest whenever you hear his name or stumble across a photograph him online. You might still get swarmed with butterflies whenever you replay the nights you spent together. But for the most part, you will be fine without him. You will be happy your paths zigged and zagged the way they have.
Unfortunately, you cannot control who you love. You cannot stop yourself from feeling a certain way, even if you know it is a horrible idea. That is why you should stop placing all of your focus on getting over him and focus on accepting he is gone.
As soon as you accept the relationship is over, you can work on building a better future for yourself. You can spend more time with friends. You can chase after your dream career. You can even find new relationships that will beat the old one.
The key to living a life without him is to stop worrying about how much you still care about him — and focus on how much you care about yourself. 
