“Sometimes we create our own heartbreaks through expectations.”
A very wise person
They say a breakup with a significant other is one of the most painful, emotionally heart-wrenching experiences a person can go through. It can feel like your physical heart is breaking apart into a mosaic. You can’t eat, you lose sleep. Depression and self doubt creep in, until you cannot remove yourself from bed.
But what about a breakup with a friend? What happens when you end a decades worth of growing memories with a person you thought you could count on forever? Surely that must hurt just the same or even more.
2020 has been a year of extreme change for everyone, in all aspects of life. I have lost a lot of friends this year. Not to the most permanent form of separation we know as death but for other reasons; reasons unknown to me. I think the only thing harder than losing a friend is not knowing the reason why. This year I am being taught one of life’s biggest lessons and that is; sometimes we will never know the why. Sometimes explanations won’t be given and we will wonder forever, never truly knowing. We can only guess the reasoning and make a somewhat educated assumption but we will never know for sure.
This is a hard lesson to learn. As humans we want reasoning. That is how we move forward. We figure out the why and then come up with a plan to solve the issue. With no why, how do we move on?
Step 1) Acceptance.
Accept the fact that you don’t know why. You don’t know why you both grew apart. You don’t know why you didn’t get the job. You don’t know why he doesn’t love you anymore. You just don’t know and that is okay. It is okay not to know why. Accept that.
Step 2) Be grateful
Be grateful with the amount of time you did have with that friend. Be grateful for the experiences you had with them and for the lessons that they taught you. Be grateful, that for some miraculous reason the stars aligned just right so that you both could know each other. Be grateful that you have someone to miss. Be grateful for it all.
Step 3) Move forward
Move forward with your life and stop looking back. Take a little piece of that person with you wherever you go. A lesson they taught you, a piece of advice they gave you, a memory they made with only you; take that with you. That is how you honor something when it is no longer around. Move forward knowing that for whatever reason that person was put into your life, it is now complete. It is finished. It is time for new lessons and new people; for new experiences and new chapters to be opened.
These 3 steps are simple and give you a sense of hope but they are not easy. I type them out here before you with tears silently rolling down my cheeks because a loss is a loss and grieving is inevitable. Cry, scream, ask the wind “why me?” Do not bottle up the pain of losing something that was so special to you. It is an important step to healing.
We get upset because our expectations of what we thought was to be are broken. We expected a different outcome. We expected this to last forever but it didn’t. It lasted for as long as it was intended to and now it is done. Accept, be grateful and move forward.
I am grateful for the people that were put into my life because I recognize that it was no coincidence they were put there. I am still working things out in my mind and it is going to take some time, that is for certain. I am moving forward slowly but surely and that is okay. I want you to know that whatever you have lost will return back to you in a different form. Something better is just around the corner and when you are ready for it, it will appear.
~Em ♡
