The day that you left, I swore to myself I would never let anyone become as important to me as you were. I pushed anyone away that didn't treat me like you, or didn't talk to me like you once did. I think that when I did this, I set myself up for failure. What is failure? And how can you set yourself up for it? It's pretty simple actually. 

Failure; a lack of success

I did fail, more than once. Each time I laid in bed next to someone else, I thought of you. That made me fail. Every single time that I tried to find a reason to stay with someone new, the only reasoning I found was that someday you would come back, so I had to wait. That was failure. I had no successful relationship after you, because I failed to keep myself from comparing their every text, every action, every smile, and every joke to the ones that I shared with you. Not only did I fail at relationships, but I failed at trying to communicate with the people who wanted to be with me most. Whether that be a friendship or a relationship, even my parents. I failed. I learned to put my phone on "do not disturb" just so that I didn't have to see the notifications that I knew I would leave unopened for weeks at a time. 

It's funny because people say that time will heal, or maybe it was just bad timing. That isn't true, at all. Time doesn't heal, you have to heal yourself. Time means nothing if all that you do is use it to drown in your own self pity. "Bad timing" isn't real. If you truly love someone, the timing shouldn't matter. I mean in the future you might come back together and you might spend the rest of your lives together, but in no way will it be the same relationship you left in high school. People change, therefore, the relationship will change. It isn't because of the timing, it is because you grew up and somehow luckily you were brought back together. It truly would be coincidental. These so called " words of wisdom" are fraud. Nothing will heal you but yourself, and timing is not a factor in relationships. Love knows no time. 

I often try to help my friends feel better when their relationship fails, but the truth is, if you don't help yourself then there is no way for you to actually feel better. When I was trying my hardest to move on it made me push the people I care most about away. I didn't want people trying to make me feel better, or feel bad for me. I knew that I would only feel better if I did this on my own. I knew that moving on would only work if that's what I wanted. 

Moving on is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. It is still difficult today. As I am writing this I think about the person that I am actually trying to be with. It took a year, and a lot of misguided events for me to realize that if I wanted to move on I had to find closure, within myself, and within the relationship that I once called home. Although there is a person that I actually want to be with right now, I don't know where this will take me. I'm pretty much going into it blind. But for the first time in a year, I finally can say that I'm giving someone a chance to be good to me. Nothing in my previous relationship was bad, in fact, everything was amazing, right up until the end of things. It took a lot to be able to talk to someone and know in the back of my head that I wasn't looking for my old relationship. It took more out of me to realize that someone can be good to me without being my ex than it did anything else. 

I am a very closed book, and I don't tell many people much of anything about my personal life. I like to work things out on my own, I find it much easier that way. But my advice to you when you're trying to move on from a bad ending, remember these few things:

1. Failing is okay

2. Trying to be with someone as soon as you go through a breakup is NOT the answer

3. Follow your gut feelings, if you don't think you're ready to move on, you aren't

4. Time doesn't do the healing, you must heal yourself

5. No one knows what you need to be happy other than you, so don't try to let other people make you happy with temporary words

Moving on is the greatest thing I learned to do, no matter how much time it took me to realize.