The Blindsided Breakup: The Closure (I Gave Myself) (ch.15)
Can you truly give yourself the closure you deserve?
Here I was again… Replaying the ‘the list of everything I did (with a broken heart)’ on a loop because of ‘the run-in I wasn’t ready for’, where I fell into his words and arms… and let him fall into my bed and ghost me right after.
I’ll admit, “a while” turned into “way too long.” (So if you find yourself in a loop after months, it’s normal as far as I know…)
But after the last wake-up call, something was different. While I continued with the “unhealthy” list (party with the wrong people, dwell on the past, replay memories like a montage from a movie), I also started adding healthy habits… slowly.
I learned again and again that healing isn’t linear. You can feel a thousand steps forward one day and stumble the next. Grief doesn’t respect timelines or clean stages. Just last week, almost a year later, I teared up seeing Winter Wonderland being set up in Hyde Park, feeling guilty for still being affected. But with self-love and therapy, I reminded myself that it doesn’t mean I’m not over it. It’s just that loss and pain can resurface, even when we’ve moved on. And that’s okay.
The Small Wins
During my final letting go, small wins started stacking up alongside my grief. Things, like:
1. Deleted our WhatsApp chat history. This was hard. I did it in Amsterdam with my brother by my side, both of us holding tequila shots as I cried.
2. Stopped taking the “long way” home, just to pass by “our places,” hoping for a run-in. (Okay… stopped doing it every time I walked home.)
3. Slowly started dating again, for real this time and gradually stopped crying after each date (at least not after every interaction, thankfully…)
4. Cut down on my Kleenex expenses, apparently enough for them to drop me as their official breakup sponsor, as I stopped crying after every date and night out.
5. Left his initial necklace at home rather than carry it in my purse everywhere. Finally!
6. Stopped wearing the evil eye bracelet he got for me. Truthfully, it snapped one day… tangling with my other bracelet, nearly choking my wrist. A sign? I thought so. (I mean, I almost lost a wrist because of (him), sorry, IT (the bracelet).)
7. Began turning down nights out with “the wrong people.” My liver and neighbours were happy!
8. Cut ties with some people. I proved whatever I needed to ‘prove to him and myself’.
9. Unfollowed all the “Avoidant Attachment” pages I had started following. (Goodbye psychoanalysis, though my algorithm still needs work...)
10. Speaking of… started passing those algorithm-suggested horoscope videos predicting “follow this page and your ex will come back…” Is that the new ‘Forward this e-mail to 19794893847019238 people, or you will have bad luck for the rest of your life’?
11. Deleted our photos from my phone (okay, moved them to a secret album on my computer). Highly recommend this pure torture activity…
12. Spent more time with people who truly matter, focusing even more on real friendships.
13. Traveled a lot (those travels I had booked post-breakup before the run-in), and I used every new place to let a little more of him go.
14. Finally, started reading again. And more importantly, writing again… (Hello, Medium… thank you for helping me… with reading and writing…)
15. Dug deep into figuring out what I really want in life. You know, those “Where do you see yourself in a year or five years?” questions I used to brush off?
But despite all this, I still couldn’t let go of his initial necklace or the bracelet he gave me. Those small objects were tiny fragments I held onto like proof that it wasn’t all a dream.
The Final Reality Check
Then, during one therapy session, a conversation led to… “Why don’t you want to block him?” And I replied with something even I knew sounded ridiculous: “Just in case he needs me, you know, for an emergency…”
She tilted her head, “If you needed him, do you think he’d be there?”
So, I decided to put it to the test… As we know by now, I can’t let fully go until it is fact-checked just to make sure… (a habit I am working on, meaning just to believe/trust my gut)
Sober, on a random weekday night, I called him.
He didn’t pick up.
He didn’t call back.
No text asking if I was okay, not that night or the next day… or ever.
The sad irony? I’d once ‘joked’ with him, “How will you ever be my emergency contact?” But deep down, I knew it wasn’t a joke. I’d never felt safe with him, not even enough with something as simple as picking up the phone. I saw what my gut knew. The last reality check… Received!
It was time to let go of the last two things I was holding onto… People told me to just keep it, wear it, sell it, donate it, gift it, etc. Nothing felt right.
I am a romantic, and I romanticise everything in life. I put much meaning into everything… I’d romanticised everything about him, the bare minimum efforts into grand acts of love in my mind. Breadcrumbs… (while I still romanticise things, I no longer stand for bare minimum or breadcrumbs…).
The bittersweet closure I couldn’t get I needed to give to myself.
The Bittersweet Closure I Gave Myself
I found myself on “our bench”… the one where we were sitting when I first realised I loved him. This was the place I went to cry, think, and process during the breakup. (Yes, I romanticised the bench, too…)
Sitting there, I held the necklace and the bracelet, the last of us. I thought of how I’d gotten the bracelet fixed, even though everyone said, “If you are going to let it go anyway, why fix it?” Well unlike him… I can’t leave someone or something I loved broken… Not on purpose anyway, not knowingly or intentionally.
16. I sat there on that bench and let them both go. I left the necklace and bracelet where I’d first known I had fallen in love with him… and now where I’d said my final goodbye.
The Journey of Healing
Healing is ongoing, a lifetime process. You heal more and more each day with things from your past, present and future… But there, at that moment, when I let those two things I helplessly held onto go, I felt free.
I didn’t look back and walked away with a smile. I had my closure, my Hollywood ‘romanticised’ ending, my full circle moment… Saying goodbye to the ghost of us in the place where I truly felt us.
I also accepted that maybe I’ll never fully understand the " whys,” even though I still wish I did.
It was no longer about him. Now, it was my story.
I know what I want now: someone who stays, who fights, who doesn’t let go, who loves and gives the way I do, which brings me to my last item on the list:
17. One day… Suddenly… I felt ready to open up to love again. To let it in again and be the positively hopeful ‘in love with love’ me that I had lost for a while there… I was back but better because while I am now more open to love than I ever was before, I also know exactly what I want (and do not want), so I was also smarter…
Through all that, I realised what I missed most wasn’t him… or his love… Not once did I say, ‘I just miss the way he loved me or the way he did this…’ Another scary realisation after letting go… I forgot what his love felt like and if I ever even felt it, or was it my love that carried both of our loves… (another question mark…) But either way…
What I missed the most… was the way I loved. And I finally admitted to myself that I wanted to be loved in the same way, with the same depth.
What I Want
To go back to that question on the list… Healing, self-work, self-love and therapy taught me to ask myself what makes me happy. What do I see in a year, in five years?
I played around with some things I thought were my ‘right answers’, or the answers maybe I was programmed to think I wanted most…
Nothing felt right... while I would love to have those things in five years, sure… I didn’t care if I didn’t have them.
But what did I care about?
Turns out simple: I want to love, to heal, to give, and most of all, I want to be a mom.
I’ve known this forever but was afraid to say it out loud, afraid it wasn’t “cool” enough or that it might scare people off, that it was too boring after overcomplicating and overthinking the question my entire life.
Thanks to ‘him’, I’ve been brought back to myself in a way I’ve never felt before. While I still believe in the fairytale, love, and having a family, I also know it might or might not happen in the order I expected. And that’s okay.
I’m pursuing the things that matter most to me now, without waiting for anyone else’s approval or validation.
Starting with a new journey: my egg-freezing story, coming soon.
Letting Go Beautifully with Love
If you’re holding onto the last fragments of something you loved, remember that releasing them doesn’t erase the memories or lessen what you felt. True closure often comes from realising that you’re ready to let go, and it’s not because you’ve forgotten or that you stopped having feelings, but because you’ve grown, because you see the love you deserve through the love you give yourself and others, you see your worth, you see what you want and because you feel ready (whenever that may be).
Letting go is not about giving up… It’s saying goodbye to something that once held beauty but no longer deserves that space… making room for what’s next, for what you truly deserve and want. It is the opposite of giving up… it’s about perseverance but for the right things meant for you.
Healing really isn’t about forgetting or deleting ‘things’ from our phones; it’s about cleansing, making space for the love we deserve and doing whatever it takes to get there. And yes, that sometimes includes leaving a few pieces of jewellery on a park bench… :)”
P.S. Even after the final letting go, it’s okay to still think back, to wonder if they’re okay, and to feel emotional now and then. It makes us human… a human with an open, honest heart who loves deeply no matter what. It’s a superpower! I own that superpower now, proudly… :)
Again, thanks heartbreak, for getting me where I needed to be but pretty please don’t come back! Thank you!
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