Until you're the one crying on the floor of the shower, wondering how you let yourself get to this place, you don't understand how hard it is to actually leave someone. And once you do, it doesn't get easier like you thought; it only gets harder. Doubt plagues you and nostalgia hits you over and over again until you're black and blue with regret.

Moving on is an art; not one I have mastered, but one I’ve put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into. What people don't understand is that you have to want to move on. That sounds painfully obvious, but until I completely deleted all traces of him from my life, I wasn’t committed to the process. I kept relapsing and going back to him and letting him hurt me over and over again, even though I’d said the month before how I was “moving on”.

Here’s the key: I realized what I deserved. I realized that he wasn't treating me how I deserved to be treated. And so I left. Gone were his number and pictures of him, unfollowed were his Instagram and Twitter, deleted was his Facebook, unanswered were his months-late texts. He was a ghost, finally. I was moving on… finally.

My friends never understood why I put myself through two-plus years of what was basically torture, and neither did I until I walked away. I was never ready to let go, to accept the end of what I once thought was the best thing to ever happen to me, to leave things unsaid, undone, and unanswered. You need to come to the realization that better people will come along and that fear of the unknown and unfamiliar is not an excuse to stay. When you do, you won’t be tempted to keep going back and letting the wounds reopen without letting them heal.

It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s also the thing I'm most proud of. It took so much for me to finally get up and say, “I’m done feeling like this. I’m done being treated like this. I deserve the world, and you aren't the world anymore.” But I did it. I stuck to it. And I haven't regretted a single second of it.

I’m in the best place I've been in since three years ago when I met the “ex-world”. I smile more. I laugh often. I don’t cry on the floor of the shower anymore. I don’t wish for him at 11:11. I love myself. I respect myself. I know what I deserve, which I haven't been able to say in years, if ever. I am ok alone, and that’s a beautiful thing to be. And it’s all because I let go… and I moved on.