Most people my age have experienced some sort of heartbreak at least once in their lifetime. Whether it’s a short-term relationship you invested yourself in too much or someone who you had given your heart to for years; the process goes very much the same. They say there are five stages of loss and grief. Sure, usually people would relate that to death of a loved one, but I am going to apply it loosely to the termination of relationship. According to psychcentral.com, the stages include Denial and Isolation, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Let me explain these in relation to breakups to the best of my ability.
Denial and Isolation: This can’t be happening, right? How could this ever happen? It hits you like a G*ddamn semi-truck going full speed down the freeway. How can someone whom you seemed so happy with—and seemed so happy to be with you—just decide to stop? You tell yourself it’s not real, it’s just something that can be worked through, and that they’ll get over themselves. It doesn’t quite sink in right away. You can’t see them. You probably curl up in your bed, or go for a drive, or anything really to get away from your own thoughts. Nobody’s words can help you, and nothing seems worth listening to because you’ve got your mind made up that it’s just simply not happening.
Anger: The anger comes fast and hard. Seriously? After all the time you’ve invested in them, this is what they choose to do with you? You make a pile of their belongings—clothes, letters, souvenirs of adventures you took together, those adorable framed photos you had on your desk or bedside table—and it’s time to be rid of them. Whether you put them in a box and return them, burn them, or throw them in the trash, they’re gone. You go out with your friends, and you try to have a good time, possibly find your rebound. Screw them, right? You don’t deserve this. You reflect on how much time you seem to have wasted, and it burns at you that you put your all in for nothing, and not much can be more frustrating.
Bargaining: What if you had done this differently? What if you hadn’t been so clingy? What if you had done more for them? Could you have prevented this? The questions don’t stop flowing. You think maybe if you change yourself they’ll come back, or maybe if you just fix all those little things you believe irritate them. Should you change your social habits? Maybe go out less? Stop hanging out with that group of friends they didn’t always like? You pick your brain about every aspect about what you could have done or can do to make this go your way.
Depression: The worst. You don’t want to get up in the morning, you don’t want to go to work, you don’t want to go to class. You don’t want to go out and experience all the little things that remind you of them, because everything does. One second you’re fine, driving around listening to the radio and that one song lyric sends a wave of raw emotion over you, and then you’re pulled over in a parking lot somewhere sobbing into your steering wheel. You go out with your friends and someone orders their favorite food or the drink that you two spent a night with a bottle of, watching movies and talking about life. You see someone in a crowd that vaguely resembles them, and then you find yourself in tears somewhere. It seems like it’ll never stop.
Acceptance: Because it does stop. You find you again. You get back into the swing of your life enjoying the things that you have the right to go out and conquer. You can go out to a bar and meet someone cute and talk to them without feeling guilty. You can see them across campus and not be hit with a wave of nausea. You move on. Accepting what you cannot change opens up a new lens of life; take what hurt you and let it make you stronger. Once you overcome it, it may never make you weak again.
As someone personally going through this struggle, I want to let you know that you will be OK. Do not let someone who does not care for you ruin your outlook on anything: good times, new relationships, day-to-day tasks, nothing. You are stronger than a bad breakup. These feelings will not last forever, and you will come out so much stronger. You will learn to love again, learn to trust again, and learn to be happy with yourself. Just because one person didn’t want you doesn’t mean you’re not good enough. You will always mean the world to someone, you just need to find the right one. So go make a playlist of T-Swift and Miranda Lambert songs and just know you got this.
