An Unedited List Of Things I Did To Get Over You

I listened to jazz. For a good while, jazz was my medicine. I bought a good pair of earphones and let myself drift away in the music. It’d be the tune putting me to sleep on the train ride to work and again back home, or anytime really so that I wouldn’t have to think about us. But I always ended up thinking about us. I’d travel back in time to the days we spent together and I would feel my cheeks wet. I realised jazz actually reminded me of you, and I listened not to distract myself from thoughts of you but because instinctively, I wanted to feel close to you.

I read Haruki Murakami, Men without Women. I wanted to understand how you might feel when I was gone. It was actually the first book I’d read by him. The writing was very easy to read and soothing. I loved many quotes in it, including this one, “Leaving who one was for a brief time, then returning. But the self that one returned to was never exactly the same as the self that one had left behind.” I knew for a fact that it was true. I wasn’t the same anymore. But the worst part is I couldn’t even remember how I had been before you.

I bought myself a new Macbook. It was one of the best purchases I’d made, especially for my writing. I’d never been a Mac person but finally, I made the change. Well, I was desperate for a change, for some positive feeling. It did a good job. I wrote so much more, 1 to 2 pieces a week on average, and I was very happy about this productivity. Most pieces were about you, though. You inspired me. You stirred up in me so many deep thoughts and feelings. At times, they got so overwhelming I had to let them out. I was worried I might have gone crazy. But perhaps I’d never been saner.

I tried to dump my feelings on you. It started with the first long message in which I called out what you did wrong to me and how much I treasured our connection but thought perhaps to you it was nothing (I knew it was special to you too, I just childishly guilt-tripped you). You asked me why I said all this, and I replied, I wanted to get you out of my system. (You weren’t impressed but) I (still) did this long message routine many times, beating you up with intense emotions I couldn’t resolve on my own. However, it didn’t exactly work. My heart still managed to hide sharp pieces of you somewhere which has been cutting me deeply, unexpectedly.

I went on dates. I met men again, being hopeful and purposeful. But as usual, I got disappointed and ended up going home crying. Modern dating is a fucking garbage bag, do you know? And I’m tired of having to show grown men how to treat women, me, even just like a decent human being, and I’m not even talking about a partner yet. You’d set the bar high, I must say. And it’s not just because you were truly reliable, stable, responsible, respectful, considerate, but mostly because you made me feel myself, seen and alive like I’d rather be nowhere else. I shone powerfully in your presence. This quote from Newsroom resonated with me, “Except for the things (s)he did wrong, (s)he did everything right too.”

I told you I didn’t want to see you again. It broke my heart to send that text message but I did it anyway. I knew it was the right thing to do for myself. Because no matter what I did to get over you, as you can see, it only reaffirmed how much you meant to me. There was and is no future for us — that’s a given, so I was left with only one choice which was to remove myself from you, to live this life pretending we didn’t happen and you didn’t exist. Maybe I was lucky after all to have experienced what we experienced. I hope time will heal and I’ll find the light and hear the music again because right now, still, it’s so dark and deafening.