“Being a bitch is easy. It's finding the alternative that's hard.”- David Levithan
Despite the fact the he not only broke my heart, destroyed all my friendships and slandered my reputation all in the span of a week, I hardly speak badly about my ex-boyfriend, even a year later. I'm sure many people are going to think that the reason I never talk badly about my ex-boyfriend is that I was horribly in the wrong and I have no right to talk badly about my ex, and while I wasn't 100% innocent, neither was my he.
I could have destroyed my ex-boyfriend's future (not just for giggles, but for legitimate reasons), but I didn't. We dated for two years (which feels like a long time in high school) and we fought every day for a year and a half. It took him wanting a "break," ignoring me for two weeks, and me finding attention elsewhere for our toxic partnership to come to an end. Over the span of two years we fought nonstop, but because we were so absorbed in each other's existences we loved each other an insane amount. In hindsight the relationship was completely and utterly codependent, not healthy in the slightest. What can I say? We were young and in love.
When we broke up, I was completely heartbroken. I was exactly like the girls you see in the movies. I wrote poetry, I cried (even in the middle of class), I started drinking (a lot), I started hooking up with random guys (also a lot), I cut my hair and I called his house in the middle of the night. Through all of this, I didn't talk badly about him. Meanwhile, my ex-boyfriend was telling everyone how much of a slut I was and I lost all of my best friends, leaving me to grieve on my own. The other day one of my friend's asked me why I rarely talk badly about my ex-boyfriend, and the answer is something my mom told me when I was about 13:
"When your dad left I didn't say bad things about him to you and your sister. I never bothered because I know the type of person your father is and that someday you and your sister would find out exactly who I found out he is. My talking badly about him would push the two of you further from me and make me seem like I was speaking out of anger and not the truth."
Those words never really applied to my life up until the day my ex-boyfriend walked out of my life. I could sit and speak badly about him until everyone who sat around me knew every intimate detail and every specific instance he hurt me, but that would make me look like a bitter ex rather than someone exposing the cruelties they had endured. I never talk badly about my ex-boyfriend because I believe that someday he will get karmic retribution for the pain he pushed onto me, just like I did for the pain I caused him. People hear him still saying negative words about me and it makes him look like he is someone who can't move on; like someone who is cruel for the sake of being cruel.
Talking badly about anyone that leaves your life won't fill the void they created by leaving. I didn't let the void I felt expand to the parts of myself that were still whole: I managed to write two new books and I got in contact with a publisher who loves one of them. I studied a language in the mountains of Vermont, and learned to love and rebuild myself after a heartbreak I thought I could never bounce back from. So instead of talking badly about your ex (no matter when the breakup happens or happened) focus on building yourself to be better. If your ex talks badly about you, it exposes their true colors and not your own.
