What It’s Like To Be The Girl Who Can’t Move On

Once upon a cliché high school romance, I was in love.

It wasn’t “like”, it wasn’t “lust”, it was that all consuming, I-love-your flaws, I-love-your-soul, I-love-your-morning-breath kind of love that you never completely recover from. I loved him more than I love carbs or Jimmy Choo… more love than I ever thought I was capable of.

I didn’t get butterflies in my stomach when he came into a room – there was something more powerful and reckless and wild and beautiful down there. Was there a fucking bald eagle in my stomach? No matter what I was doing, I was happier if I was doing it with him. Whether we were making breakfast, skinny-dipping at three a.m. on a summer night, or he was teaching me how to do laundry; I couldn’t stop smiling when we were together. His arms were my happy place. It was totally, friggin nauseating, looking back at it now.

He was my best friend. Which is why it’s been completely, humiliatingly impossible for me to move on with my life… Being the person in the relationship who moves on last is a super special kind of hell. Until you’ve lost a love that you built up to be the kind of sappy, fairytale shit that’d make Cinderella jealous – until you’ve lost the person who you thought you’d wake up with every morning ‘til one of you dropped dead – you’ll never understand what it’s like to be truly ‘crazy’ about someone. Crazy enough that, even when they’ve moved on, you can’t let yourself and do the same.

Every time you start get over him, you’ll run into him or iTunes will play your song or you’ll have a dream about him. It’s bullshit. I would know, because I’m the girl who can’t move on… The girl who can’t move on is the obsessive, batshit-crazy, prepossessed ex-girlfriend. The girl who can’t let it go – but who would never admit it to anyone else. Not even her best friend… usually, not even to herself.

The girl who can’t move on is proud. She hates that she’s not “winning the breakup” or whatever the hot one’s supposed to do. She’s too proud to admit defeat, but she was too in love to move on. She already gave her entire heart away, and there are no leftovers to give to someone new.

The girl who can’t move on compares every new tall-dark-handsome that waltzes into her life to her old love, and no matter what this new guy does, he’ll never measure up to the massive ghost of past love that’s haunting her heart. Any poor sap trying to win her over doesn’t stand a chance. “He’s a player.” “He’s too nice.” “His breath always smells like bagels. How could I live with that everyday?”

The Girl Who Can’t Move On is thankful, in a way, that she got to experience such a life-changing, soul-rattling love, *Insert bullshit ‘better to have loved and lost’ quote here* – but, she resents it every single day, too.

The Girl Who Can’t Move On is stronger than most; she goes through hell everyday she can’t forget him, every time he posts a picture with his new girlfriend… but, she’s still here.

Until you’re the girl who can’t move on, you’ll never understand her. Maybe you haven’t experienced a truly great love yet. Maybe you have, but you’ve never had to lose it.
Whatever the case, you’ll never understand the agony this girl goes through trying to be whole again without him – trying to be the girl who moved the hell on and never looked back – until you’ve walked a few miles in her stilettos.

All this girl can do is hope that, maybe, someday, she’ll fall in love again – if not with another man, with herself again. We the her without him.

And, someday, she will.