Holly Riordan

Just yesterday, you were daydreaming about creating a future alongside this person. Just yesterday, you were talking and laughing together. Just yesterday, everything felt fine.

You fidget with your hands constantly.

It’s hard to get over someone when you aren’t sure why they walked away. It’s even harder to get over someone when you aren’t sure how they felt about you in the first place.

We have a hard time accepting our feelings are one-sided. We assume the other person must feel the same way about us, so we make up excuses about why they haven’t asked us out yet.

“I can’t leave because we have too much history.”

You don’t want to cross any boundaries and scare him off, so you’re careful about how much you text him. You’re careful about how emotional you get in front of him. You’re careful about how many compliments you give him.

You start wondering whether your friends even care about you since they haven’t realized you’ve been isolating yourself, they haven’t realized you’ve gone MIA, they haven’t realized anything is wrong.

This doesn’t mean you should start hating yourself for everything you’ve done wrong. It doesn’t mean you should mope about what a screwup you are either.

Just because you’re afraid of reaching the next milestone doesn’t mean you’re with the wrong person.

You don’t want to jump into a relationship you’re not ready for and end up hurting the other person. But you don’t want to run away on a whim and end up hurting yourself either.

Before you text him back, decide whether you really want to reopen old wounds. Decide whether you really want to risk getting your heart broken by him again.

Stop spending time with people who make you feel worse about yourself, people who never have anything nice to say about you, people who never compliment you but always save time to criticize you.

You don’t want to end up falling deeply in love with someone and dedicating years of your life to someone, only to wake up one day and realize you have completely different ideas of happiness. 

If you’ve been working your ass off, it’s not your fault if no one takes notice.

When you’re ready to move on, you shouldn’t feel guilty about the people you’re leaving behind. You should be making decisions based on what is best for your own future, your own happiness, and your own mental health. 

Your forever person might not know the right steps to take to calm you down when you’re spiraling — but that doesn’t mean they are never going to understand your anxiety.

The end of your relationship isn’t the end of your happiness. In fact, you’re going to feel better shedding yourself from the wrong relationship than you would have felt fighting for the wrong relationship. 

Every time you reach a new goal, you’ll stop stressing about old things, but you’ll have new things to stress about.