Sometimes, people leave. They chose to leave your life for one reason or another, and it can make a person feel as though they’ve been left in the dust. It can be hard to cope with all the emotions when someone no longer wants to be a part of your life. But you can do it. You can make it, and life will go on.

The first thing you have to realize is that this person isn’t going to come back. At least not right away, and most likely not at all. You can’t make them come back, and you shouldn’t have to. If they have chosen to leave your life it is for a reason, and I personally believe that everything happens for a reason. Thus, they weren’t meant to be in your life long term in the first place.

Next, you have to accept the fact that they have left. This can be tricky because often times you cannot just accept this fact in one shot. You may think that you’re doing okay since they’ve left, but then you see their favorite candy that you would have gotten them for their birthday or just when you were thinking of them, or you hear that song, you know the one that you used to blast as loud as you could in the car and sing along to with them, laughing the whole time. And it’s when those things happen that you’ll realize you miss them. That’s alright; you’re allowed to miss them. You’re allowed to be sad because whether this person was a friend, a significant other, or a family member, they had a significant impact on your life.

You have to realize that no matter what you do, you can never completely erase this person from your life. You may have deleted every picture of them from your phone and stopped listening to your shared favorite song of the moment. You may even have blocked them from all forms of social media because you were feeling angry and hurt and thought you didn’t care anymore. But you do. And maybe you resent that part of yourself right now, but honestly, you should embrace it. Embrace the fact that they were important for whatever period of time they were in your life. And then embrace the fact that they let go.

You then must also embrace and accept the fact that you played a part in them leaving your life. Maybe you simply lost touch, maybe you weren’t a good match, maybe you were toxic for each other. But the sooner you realize that you too played a part in this separation, the sooner you can mature, forgive yourself, and forgive the other person too. Forgiveness is probably the biggest step in all of this. All relationships are a two-way street, which means at the end of the day, the ending of a relationship of any kind is a two-person job.

So forgive, don’t forget, and recognize that even though someone significant has left your life, you came out on the other side.