“Perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday,
separate, in the evening.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
Sadness swirls at the bottom of your lungs like ice cubes in a scotch glass. You move through life in slow motion, heartbreak heavily boiling down your existence into yawning intervals of despair and longing. You can’t stand the thought of going on without them – feeling like your heart is beating outside your chest, walking around in the world without you.
They were your best friend, your everything. And you’re not afraid to say it: THEY WERE YOUR EVERYTHING. You laughed together, loved together, talked about deep stuff, and your dreams. The best was when you could just be in the same room with together, both of you doing your own thing, no need for words.
But now…it’s over. Maybe they did something stupid like bail out because they were afraid. Or maybe they found interest in someone else and started pursuing that. Perhaps you just fought too much and you both couldn’t fix it.
Now you live in a suspended chamber of sadness and expectation. Will they come back? Someday when they learn what they’re supposed to learn out there, will they come back? You see them dating other people and you KNOW those people will never understand them like you do, be able to comfort them like you do, build a future like you could’ve together. And it’s annoying. It’s heartbreaking.
Your friends try to tell you the perfect guy/girl is out there for you, and you just have to let go of your ex and open your heart. What planet are they on?? You don’t want to love someone else. You don’t want to move on. These “consciousness people” tell you to take all that love you had for THEM and give it to YOURSELF. WTF? 6 million bubble baths later…you still love your ex and your toes are pruney.
So, what do you do? How do you survive this when you wish for nothing other than to be back with your ex? How do you move on without closing the door?
You swim.
Not in the antiseptic “everything happens for a reason” I’m-moving-on kinda way. But in a way that you 1. hold the love for your ex, AND, 2. believe that everything IS working out for your good (even though you’re not together). You swim like hell away from the “old version” of your relationship and quit memorializing it every waking moment of your day. That means you let go of trying to figure out if you will ever be with them. You also stop trying to “accept” the break up. Your goal is neutrality, and whatever degree you can be okay with this moment.
And when you swim far enough, you’ll see a bridge. Yes, this is a narrow bridge. It’s tricky. But you can do it. Run across that bridge built by your own desire to feel happiness, to feel alive, and to experience an even greater measure of love. It is there for you.
Understand that your ex came into your life by function of your own vibration and willingness to accept their love. You didn’t even know it, but your antenna was beaming out a secret code that their receptors picked up (and vice-versa). When you embraced them into your life and then built a relationship with them, you underestimated your own power in making that happen. You were amazed, surprised, and euphoric …. and you thought that love was something lucky that “happened” to you.
The best thing you can do for your past relationship is to create a vacuum for it to show up again (if that’s what you truly want) and trust that it will come back if you both are vibing in the right way for each other. But creating a vacuum means letting go of “being friends” with them, and conversely, not “hating” on them to your friends, etc. Both are two sides of the same coin. Your goal is neutrality because it’s the ground floor, and that’s where everything lasting gets built. The kindest thing I can tell you is get your ass on the floor and get neutral. Stop thinking you will “save” them by your advice and “woo” them by your friendship.
Create a space that is so pure, and quiet, and clean that in order for your love to come back they would have to create a brand new relationship with you. It’s really hard to do that when you’re still “friends” with them or you’re still hanging out with their mom/sister/brother. You have to be willing to let them live without you and then assess what that means for themselves.
If time passes and they’ve grown in the right way, it will be obvious and nothing can stop your being together. But there is no room for the past, and you must stop idolizing what you had.
Truth is, many people go on to find even greater loves than the one they thought was their “soul mate” love, but only WHEN they realize they were the creators of their past to begin with. This isn’t that simple, as there are many factors that go into into creating your life: the will of the other person, your soul contracts which are providing circumstances/relationships to further your growth, and your co-creation of life with the divine.
But something to ponder: do you know many broken-hearted people have written poems, started businesses, bravely dated other people, listened to their friends’ ongoing dramas, all while their hearts were bleeding out of their chests? They could’ve collapsed into a heap of “I can’t live with my pain” but instead they carried the broken love while busting ass for their future. The unifying theme is resistance and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It’s not fragility. It’s strength. It’s nerve. And that’s what you have to do.
In this process you will come to love yourself, trust yourself, and be so centered that you will truly have your pick of the best life partner out there. Do whatever is going to make you happy to get through it. Keep being real with yourself and keep returning to your truth.
You deserve a love that’s reciprocal and is ever-lasting.
Beam bright.
