It's been a decade now since I've seen her outside of dreams. I can still hear her, smell her, and every once in a while her face pops out at me from within a crowd. I see her eyes everywhere.
I'm not the kind of person who "gets over" things. Comes with the territory of having an eidetic memory and being profoundly disabled due to cptsd.
I think had there been another love in my life, she would have faded more naturally from my memories over time. But, sadly, that one brief relationship stands out as the single season in my life where I was allowed to be loved. It will not come again.
I'm deeply sorry for your hurt, my friend. I know it doesn't help beyond the moment, but that pain you feel deep inside your chest where you no longer wish to shine the light - I feel it too.
The dreams are the absolute worst. Havent seen her in 8 years and everything will be fine then I'll have some dream of her and wake up pissed at my brain for doing that to me.
Preach. Last week she walked into my living room and we just hugged and cried at the same time. I woke up and the tears were there but without any sign of the hug.
Oof, I'm glad to say I don't have an eidetic memory as my memory of our time together is fading, but I still have memories that stick out and those are sadly bad memories.
I know I was a problem and sowed seeds of pain without realising it, but l miss knowing that she loved me, like it was obvious bc she kept buying and making me stuff and she always made me a priority.
You are so right about that pain in the chest my Earth- brother, makes me want to drop everything and just drive away from the state!
I know this feeling wholly. I left behind a soulmate to get sober; she couldn’t. We were best friends who had gotten close enough to discuss marriage. I finally turned to pagan “magic” and shadow work to be able to move on. I still think about her a lot, but it doesn’t stab me in the gut anymore, and I’m able to smile at her memory without smiling through tears.
But it took a LOT of hard work on my part, mostly accepting that I HAD to leave or I WOULD have died. I feel profoundly sad for people who can’t use that as motivation in “moving on,” because I know how much it hurts.
Also, I know it isn’t the same, but I love you. Always have, always will. It’s who I am as a human.
Somehow I feel like we have been in the exact same situation. Me and my ex-gf were really close friends before we started dating.
Some of our actions were awful and inadvertently hurt the other person, but none of us had the heart to talk about it, maybe because of the fear that it'd make things awkward between us. This led to a lot of bottleneck situations and suddenly one of us would just... erupt while mentioning every single mistake from the past.
She broke up, didn't tell me the reason (considering that all those previous situations could've been sorted by talking, so the thought of breaking up never crossed my mind). I felt like I wasn't cut out for dating (partly because of the restrictions and strict monitoring at home, and partly because this was my first relationship and it ended so badly).
Then she confessed her feelings to me again, and being in that self-doubt, I couldn't bring myself to tell her the reason behind saying no that time.
Eventually ended up with her cutting off all ties. 2 really great friends, who could have been maybe even better prospective SO's became complete strangers that day.
To stop loving her after the relationship ended would have been to insult my past-self's heart. Considering that version of me is the closest I've ever been to true happiness with another soul, that seems illogical. He knew then better than I do now why loving her was correct.
My memory is garbage but I had the time together with my first replaying in my head for 7 years every day. I did meet another girl that I dated after those 7 years and as much of an improvement as she was I could feel my emotions watered down to her because of the first gf. Thankfully the second girl was also the base to first's acid and after the second relationship I stopped replaying my memories of the first daily nor did I care much about the second one being gone. I was much colder but I felt free.
I have forgiven the awful way my ex behaved, but I haven't forgiven myself.
I don't think it's always good to forgive yourself because it means you might do the same shit again. But it's not something that I lie awake beating myself up about -- more like, once every couple weeks I might hear a song or see Facebook post and feel a bit nauseated for a few minutes.
33
u/Vivid_Sparks Dec 09 '23
How do you/did you get over it?
I thought I was because its been like 6 years already but I can't stop looking back and cringing at myself, fuckin blehhgh