One Day, You Won’t Be Bothered to Revisit the Past Anymore

One of my exes had the audacity to tell me that I would still be hung up over him over the next two or three years after the break-up. I was so pissed that I immediately got my act together and stopped indulging in my emotions.

Though I’ll be honest: Even when I managed to move on through sheer discipline, it wasn’t like I could just switch off all my thoughts about the past at once — even now, sometimes, they pop up in my mind, though just neutrally.

As an emotional, reflective person, it always took me a long while to heal from broken relationships. I had to untangle each mental and emotional knot until there was none left, and it could feel like forever.

I knew I would come out the other side stronger and better, but it still scared me to find myself in the thick of a traumatising break-up, acting compulsively like I was possessed.

At one point, I genuinely thought I might never get over the hurt an ex caused me and slip down a road far from my vision. I remember feeling paralysed in a rented room in central London, covered in sweat as I opened my eyes in the morning. My future had turned into a blur. I worked hard to break toxic attachments, but the temporary consequence was that I was deeply lost.

It was a dark time in my life.

I was alone and had no idea what would come — I only knew to do the next right thing. And I did.

But, even then, it was not a smooth ride. I beat myself up over taking so long to move on despite making steady progress; I felt guilty for wondering about the people in my past even when I had no intention to get involved with them ever again.

See, I realised that I needed to stop having the expectation that I should be over the past “by now” and so, I learned to let myself be.

I allowed myself to make space for the mental residue while continuing to invest in my present. I kept on living. And the more my present evolves, the more irrelevant and uninteresting my past becomes (and I can’t remember vividly things older than three years anyway.)

Today, I’m in love with my life.

It has turned out far more marvelous than I could ever imagine. My dreams are slowly coming true. It’s wild to think none of this would happen if I had given in to the depressing state I was in and carried on that trajectory. Or if any of my exes had held on to me like I had wanted. My god.

Break-ups are soul-crushing, but they are rarely bad in nature.

Most of the time, they need to happen.

They get the wrong people out of your way, so you can go find the right people and build the right life for yourself.

Trust me, it’s worth every effort.

If you’re trying to get over an ex right now, let me tell you — you can’t possibly think that someone who doesn’t choose you is what you deserve. You can’t possibly think that this is all there is. Life’s so much more, and it’s in your rights.

Time is your most valuable asset, so don’t waste it on anything that doesn’t serve you. The sooner you pull the plug, the more time you’ll get back, and you’ll thank yourself later.

Don’t worry if you still revisit long-gone things and people — that’s just a thing your mind does. If you keep going and making life happen though, one day, you will just naturally lose interest in the past because you’re too busy loving your present. The haze around your future will be lifted. You will stop asking what-ifs because you don’t want to change a thing about your life — it’s too precious. Such a perspective is awaiting you.

Every step you take forward is a chance you give yourself to live a life you love; keep giving yourself that chance over again.