Moving On (And Moving Out)

While I was power packing up my apartment that I’ve lived in for almost 8 years, my heart skipped a beat as I noticed something in the back of one of my closets. It’s looming figure was unfamiliar and it took a moment for me to realize what I was looking at: My ex-fiancé--in his mad-dash scramble to move out of our shared apartment and never see me again--had left behind a large camping backpack filled with supplies. For a moment I panicked. Did my discovery of this item mean I had to return it? Was I going to have to break our unofficial no contact rule just to be polite? Within a few moments I came to my senses, picked up the oversized bag and dumped it down the trash chute. Easy solve! Emotional breakdown avoided! Until I started to clean out my other closet and found a handwritten list of all the guests I had planned to invite to our wedding that never happened.

As I stared at the list, I waited to feel something. I might be in a happy and healthy new relationship, but that doesn’t mean I am immune from feeling pain. Surely, I would feel a twinge of heartache at my lost future. At the version of my life that got ripped away from me one random Monday night in 2020. But that twinge didn’t come. Instead, I just felt a burning desire to finish packing. So I kept going and that’s when I finally found the item that stopped me in my tracks. It was a notebook I had started right after my abandonment. And what I saw inside those pages did make my heart ache--but not for my ex-fiance. My heart broke for the past version of me who missed him so much, she thought she might explode.

Even though I’m the one who wrote everything in that journal, it felt like I was being nosey or invading someone else’s privacy as I read through it. Pain and anguish leapt off the page, but so did a determination to get better. Past Me had started off the journal with a variety of lists meant to help me process my feelings. The first of which was titled, “How He Held Me Back.” (The bullet points included: Didn’t want a second dog, didn’t want to keep fostering. I couldn’t help but smile as my second dog, a foster-fail with my current partner, pitter-pattered around the apartment.) I commended my past self for looking at the positives while still actively drowning in the negatives.

Right below this, however, was a list titled Worst Case Scenario. There were just three points:

Below this gut-wrenching list was another one titled How Is This Different From Now where I confronted what it would inevitably feel like to be completely without hope of reconciliation. These bullet points included:

At the same time as I was confronting my greatest fear--that the person I loved could easily leave me without any regret--I was simultaneously able to recognize that I was already living without him. And while the removal of hope from my internal world would be incredibly painful, it would not change my day-to-day because he was already gone. I had already started my new life despite my reluctance to do so. Instead of avoiding, as I was previously prone to do when it came to uncomfortable feelings, I was looking discomfort and hurt right in the face and saying, “Okay, now what?”

The following pages were filled with another list (What He Gave Me) and notes from therapy sessions. But the majority of the journal remained empty. I had used it until I didn’t need it anymore and then I promptly forgot about it. As I skimmed through the rest of it with my current life packed in boxes around me, I felt transported to another time. A time when my pain was so raw I thought I would never find my way back to peace. Certain phrases leapt up at me like “I’m scared that I still expect him to come back” and “this is grief, this is loss, this is not easy.” I felt sadness for this girl who was hurting so deeply and great relief that I was no longer her.

It’s objectively strange to be so far removed from who I was a mere year ago, but this journal is a testament that I put in so much work to get here. The fact that I am no longer traumatized by what happened to me doesn’t diminish the pain I felt at the time or the attachment I had to my ex. Instead, it speaks to the power of active healing. During those first few months, I forced myself to process what had happened to me. I forced myself to confront the pain and the heartbreak. I didn’t minimize my feelings. On the contrary, I shouted them from the rooftop and wrote about them in real time. I cried a whole lot and had many late-night conversations with my mom where I kept repeating something along the lines of “this is bananas!” as she fervently nodded in agreement. I didn’t try to convince myself it “wasn’t a big deal” and I didn’t hide my hurt from acquaintances checking in on me. For a while there, being someone who was left by my fiancé was my main personality trait. But by not stuffing down my pain, I was able to let go of it quicker. I was able--over time--to let it pass through me as I transformed into someone with many equally important personality traits and a complicated history.

It turns out finding this journal did make me feel something: pride. I am incredibly proud of myself for not giving up. For not assuming that the end of my relationship meant the end of my life. I am so thankful I fought my way through the hurt and the rejection and the yuck in order to the feel the comfort and love of someone new. I might not be the past version of me who wrote in that journal anymore, but I owe her my present and my future.  

xoxo,

Allison