Judging the relationship for what it made me feel and not how it ended.

If I don't let it hurt, it'll never stop trying to. Spare me the stages of good grief and wallow in the pain. Suffer for a while. It's inevitable and more powerful that me. If it weren't, I could not learn anything from it.

Letting it hurt and brew and hurt some more is the fastest way to 'get it over with' or whatever they say. The harder I feel and the harder I cry, the stronger I heal. If I don't truly feel pain, I am lying to myself and I cannot learn my lesson properly.

I moved on by learning to function in daily life without them. I removed them from the items and habits I associated with them. I started at coffee, by making one cup at a time and drinking it the way I drink it, the way I like to mix it. No more one for you, one for me. No more buying their favorite creamer. Just milk and sugar like the old days. One single cup at a time

I scraped them off the bottoms of my shoes and walked the sidewalks we walked, alone this time and looked around me, soaking in the details, instead of being mesmerized by someone else. I appreciate the city, I do. I take myself on walks to breathe and remember.

I talk with them in mind, but never about them. They can be in the back of my thoughts without peeking past my voice and into my conversations. I can hold onto them and our memories without letting them get in my way of making new ones. After all, they were important to me. No matter how important something is, there will always be obstacles and times where even the most important thing is knocked off the top spot on my priority list. Life gets in the way, and that's fine. But only my life should ever get in my own way.

I return to my roots. I reconnect with old friends and I find out what I've missed. I show how much I care a little bit more. Just enough for others to notice a difference, but not enough to bother them, not again. It's distracting from my own narrative, but it doesn't hurt to branch out the plot every now and then. Sometimes I even think about reconnecting with family. Only when I'm truly at a loss, though. That kind of mess is only worth so much.

Then I tell stories. I just finish by telling stories. with some people, I have to tell sad stories for a while before I'm completely back to fiction, back in control. With others, I can jump straight into the most unrealistic parts of everything we dreamt. Sometimes, I have to parallel life with story to really understand what happened to the story and the ending. Word for word, just changing the names a little bit... But I have to tell stories. I have to tell stories about how it happened, why it happened, what won't happen, and what won't happen again. I tell stories to teach other people, to learn my lesson, to teach myself, to forget...

I tell stories to get over it. I tell stories to be back in control.

I tell stories to take back control.