I got dumped.  Kicked to the curb.  Ditched.  

One minute we were planning a holiday, the next minute I was sending a reminder of items for him pack from the house that we’d share for five years and talking about who would have custody of the dogs.  I was calling utility companies to remove his name from the bills.  Having to tell people that I saw in passing “this is really awkward but, we broke up”.  I had to cancel flights for a holiday we had booked together.  It was a whirlwind of emotions that resembled something like the different stages of grief.  Through those stages I still had to get up in the morning and pretend that my life wasn’t falling apart.  Forget Olivia Colman, I should have been awarded a damn Oscar for an outstanding performance in my own life.  I’d put on make up, leave the house, go to work and try not to cry at my desk.  Which I was pretty unsuccessful at on a number of occasions where I had to lock myself in a toilet cubicle and pray that my mascara would hold up.

That was my life for a good couple of months.  I’d flit between a heartbroken duvet monster who hid in bed, curtains drawn, willing myself to sleep (because not being awake was easier than tormenting myself with “what is he thinking, what is he feeling, why isn’t he just here?”) and a version of myself who just wanted to fast forward the next few months to a morning where I’d wake up and wouldn’t be checking my phone for a message to say “can I come home?”

One of the pieces of advice you’ll be given during a break up is that “It takes time”, “give yourself time”, “time is a healer”.

Well,  it’s 6 months on. That’s 182 days, 4380 hours or 262800 minutes of healing.  I no longer check my phone for that message and I haven’t cried at my desk in a long time (which is great for my work cred, to be honest.  I’m an ugly ass crier) so I figured it was about time to share what my break up taught me about life, love and most of all, myself.

Celebrate small victories

The last thing you want to think about when you’re mid break up is the future.  Especially the immediate future.  Tackling a calendar of plans for “us” when I was now just “me” was hard.  Thinking about the holidays I’d have to change, the flights I’d need to cancel, Christmas.  God, Christmas.  Even making it to the next weekend would feel like a chore in itself because you’re just so used to being part of a unit.   The way I managed to deal was allowing myself to take each day as it came.  Breaking my life into 24 hour segments rather than this infinite amount of time to come allowed me to celebrate small victories of the day or week.  Y’know, like “didn’t check his Whatsapp status for a whole day”, “didn’t cry for a week”, “didn’t wear the same outfit for 3 days in a rows and changed my underwear”.

You’re not the first & you won’t be the last

What really struck a chord with me was that every single person out there has been through heartbreak of some description or another and although there’s no emotional pain like it, they came out the other side.  Battered, bruised, a little bit broken yep, but they survived it.  Because that’s what life is about.   One of the best things I did was eventually open up and let people know what I was going through on my social accounts.  The number of people (men & women) who got in touch to share their personal stories of heartbreak that they had gone through and are still going through, be it a week, a month or a year on was overwhelming.  It reminded me that we’re all human and we’re never alone in how we’re feeling.

Don’t obsess (or try not to)

Now I know this one is difficult because hello, I’m Charl and I’m the queen of overthinking, (in fact, I feel like I’m over thinking this post right now) but believe me… overthinking what they’re doing, who they’re with, how they’re feeling, why they haven’t replied to your message is not conducive and in actual fact is more like a form torture than being in anyway helpful.  Same for social stalking and reading into every thing they’ve posted since B Day on Facebook (break up day, obv).  Ditto for checking who their new friends are or where they’ve been tagged.  If you can’t stay off your social media (because how are you meant to get through a break up without constant memes?) unfollow them so you don’t have to be privvy to their moving on or at least mute them.  It’ll make the healing process much easier.

Don’t force yourself to move on.

I downloaded Tinder sooner than I probably should have.  One night, after spending a Saturday night on my own and after sinking one too many gins, I decided that the sadness had to stop.  I tried to convince myself that the best way to get over one guy was to get under another (who even came up with that idea?) and swiping my way through every male within a 10km radius would be the answer to all my problems.  Spoiler, it wasn’t.  It just left me on a date, drinking too much vino bianco and comparing the guy in front of me to my ex.  I went home, drunk text my ex (repeatedly) and woke up the next morning feeling like I’d gone 20 steps back.  Suffice to say I deleted Tinder in my hungover haze.

…or beat yourself up.

We beat ourselves up so often in everyday life which is the kinda shit we need to stop anyway, but we especially need to learn not to do so when we’re already beaten and feeling deflated.  I would beat myself up for everything.  For not being enough for him to stay.  For not being able to communicate how I was feeling.  For letting my emotions over rule my head.  For feeling like I was a burden on other people.  For not being over it already.  That was until a friend told me to stop.  “Be kind to yourself” they said, and it was at that moment that I realised I was being too hard on myself and expecting too much from myself, too soon.

Stop blaming, be accountable & learn your lessons

With every monumental life moment there are lessons to learn.  About yourself and about your expectations of a relationship.  Chances are, if you ignore the screaming lessons your last relationship is trying to teach you, you’ll find yourself in another relationship, a few years down the line crying over the exact same issues because you didn’t hold yourself accountable.  Being responsible for your own actions, not laying blame as a coping mechanism and working towards putting that accountability to positive use.  Save yourself from making the same mistake twice and take what you learnt from the sobbing, angry and reflective moments about yourself and your expectations of a relationship and put it to use when you’ve built yourself up again.   None of these lessons would have been learnt with the breakup so use it to curate a better version of you.

Holding onto to resentment will turn you bitter

Unless your ex was an extra special kind of bastard, allow yourself to let go of any resentment.  Forgiveness is a sign of strength and you, my friend, did not go through all that shit to wish so much negativity on someone who is no longer a part of your life.  For me, I wanted to respect my past.   I’d shared a life with this person.  Built a life, grown as a person with them, made memories and shared experiences and for me, holding onto resentment and bitterness would only make me hold those feelings against my past life and self.  Also, being bitter makes you frown which turns to wrinkles and don’t want to be suddenly single and looking like a prune.

& finally, remember that you are not defined by your relationship status

A lot of the fear of finding yourself single is learning to be alone again and not part of a couple and the crux of it is that we are all so much more than who we’re with or who we go home to at night.  Despite what advertising campaigns, movies and songs tell us, being alone is actually better for us than being in a relationship that doesn’t fulfil us.  Being alone doesn’t equal automatically equal lonely, you get to make that call.