Stop Holding On To Someone Who Is Already Gone

A phantom rarely makes good company, I tell myself as I erase the last text I’d ever draft to him. But I guess that is all he ever was to me, an outline of a photograph that never got the chance to come into focus. A person who had been long gone since the minute they entered my conscience. A man who was never really mine at all.

I don’t think falling in love with someone who will never love you back makes you foolish; I think just part of being human. We shoot our shots, we send those texts, we spend bygone nights together but sometimes, things don’t work out. But I’m starting to realize that this is okay.

It’s what you do after the fall that makes all the difference in how you rise.

And take it from someone who didn’t handle her First Big Heartbreak all that well: this will not last forever. Really! It won’t. But you’re probably making it a hell of a lot harder on yourself by hanging on and on and on.

I’m not talking about the initial healing. Because you need to grieve and look back, and this takes time. This is also not to say what you felt wasn’t real because it was and always will be.

The moment it gets unhealthy, though, is when you start trying to convince them to love you; when you start convincing yourself that their half-assed interest is enough.

It gets treacherous when you start reading old texts and try to find hidden meaning between the spaces. It’s saying you’re ready to be “just friends” when it’s only been four days. It’s getting drunk and making out with someone new while the entire time you were wishing it was them. It’s hoping they’ll change their mind when it’s clearly already made up.

So, please, stop holding onto someone who is already gone. Stop reaching out for hands that will only hold yours in the middle of the night. Stop looking for the next chapter when the book is long closed. And stop hoping for love to grow in places it never stood a chance.

Instead, embrace the free fall and learn to fall in love with the what if of your own life, not the could be of someone else. Promise is all around you; just not with them. That’s okay.

Let go.