This time last year I was a senior in high school, and I went through a pretty messed up break up. My boyfriend at the time -- being the school year above me as well as my significant other of the five years prior -- went off to college and we mutually agreed we would break up so he could have the "college experience.” Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to enjoy my senior year of high school with the friends that I had grown up with since elementary school and have all the experiences I could not have had while having a boyfriend for so long. So, we went our separate ways but because the break up was mutual, we remained in contact since we both knew we could not so easily adapt to not speaking to the one person we talked to every day for the last five years.

Fast forward two months after the break up, a few hook ups on each of our parts, fights, rekindles, and freak outs later. I could not mentally cope and I missed how things used to be, more than ever, and what we were choosing to live with now. The experiences I was searching for turned out not to be my style, and I could not help but miss the wonderful times we shared. At that point, my plan to get my ex-boyfriend back was initiated and, yes, I did get him back, and this is just how I did it.

1. I tried my best to be the person he fell in love with.

I was in eighth grade and he was a freshman in high school when we first fell in love with each other. We were friends beforehand, having known each other since the sixth grade. I was a cheerleader and he was a football player. I was spastic, energetic, willful, ambitious, and mysterious. I knew he was attracted to those aspects about me, so I tried my best to be that person. When he came home from school to watch the football games, I made sure I was cheering my 100 percent best, looking beautiful and laughing with my teammates.

2. I used our past to my advantage.

Having been a huge part of each other's lives for all of our teenage years, we had a lot of history. We spent holidays with each other's families and traveled through Europe together when I turned 16. We went to visit my grandmother in Florida, I was there to comfort him when his childhood dog died, and we shared many more life-altering experiences. By reminding him of what we have shared and not hesitating to bring up memories, we were able to laugh and cry together. Remembering that the good outweighed the bad helped him see five years of our lives does not have to end.

3. I was not available 24/7.

Senior year of high school I attended six hours of class from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., and then went to cheerleading practice every day after school until 5:30 p.m. I was busy, but I did make time to text him first or reply to his texts. After that, I made sure he knew I was not just sitting around waiting for him to call. When I was in class, I would not answer his reply, when I was on my breaks at cheerleading practice, I would look at the message but not answer his texts until after practice ended.

By not being available and apologizing with an insincere brief description of what I was actually doing instead of answering him, I knew I was grabbing his attention. During our relationship, we both knew everything about what we were doing every minute, and although we tried giving each other a break for a month or two after our break up, once we started talking again, the automatic expectation of nothing everything about everything we were doing was rekindled.

4. We hung out and talked as friends.

I tried my best to not make what we did together when we hung out as friends like a date. We used to often hang out with our friends when we were dating, so when we hung out as friends with our friends, old habits were hard to ignore. For example, when we would hang out with our mutual best friend, we would often cook together and obviously want to be touchy with each other like we used to be. So when we hung out as friends with our best friend, I could obviously tell he wasn’t subjective to doing the things we used to do. We were drawn to each other like we used to be.

5. I did not stray from letting him know what I was thinking.

I am pretty blunt, especially when it came to my ex-boyfriend. I told him everything and anything because he was my best friend, too. Yes, I believe my bluntness was a reason for our demise, but I knew that was something we loved about each other. So when I wanted to kiss him, I told him I did and although he was definitely surprised by my accusation, we kissed. We were comfortable with each other and we realized that we could not just be friends the more we hung out again.

So, to come full circle and leave you with a piece of mind, here are some wise words from the poet connoisseur herself, Victoria Erikson.

“When connections are real, they simply never die. They can be buried or ignored or walked away from, but never broken. If you’ve deeply resonated with another person or place, the connection remains despite any distance, time, situation, lack of presence, or circumstances. If you’re doubtful then just try it -- go and revisit a person or place and see if there’s any sense at all of the space between now and then. If it was truly real, you’ll be swept back into the moment it was before it left during the same year and place with the same wonder and hope, comfort and heartbeat. Real connections live on forever.”