It hurt. It felt like she had been hit by a bus, the breath stolen from her lungs. She swears her heart stopped for a moment. Of course, she should’ve expected it. Everything had felt off the last few weeks. Forced, fading; the overwhelming love between the two no longer there. She sets her head in her hands, her thoughts overwhelming her as she begins to cry.
Elizabeth ‘Dil’ Sullivan and her girlfriend of a year had just broken up, and she had no idea what she was supposed to do. Her now-ex-girlfriend had been losing feelings for some time, and the two had eventually decided to break up. She just lost her person. The person she could always go to, always lean on, always count on, complain to, cry to, talk to. What do you do when your entire life and routine revolve around a single person, and suddenly, that’s gone? She was not one to be susceptible to change. It wasn’t something she liked nor handled well. Usually, when she was struggling with something like this, she would go to her girlfriend. Now that that option is off the table, she doesn’t know where to go, who to turn to.
The girl stood from her seat and quickly escaped to her room. Making a beeline for her bed, she collapsed into it and curled into a ball, allowing herself to sob into the pillow. She continued to cry as her heartbeat sped, and her body began to numb. Eventually, she tired herself out and fell asleep.
Over the next few days, remembering how to function without always having another person to think about was strange. Before, every morning she would wake up and text her girlfriend a ‘good morning’ before carrying on with her day. She would watch her phone and wait for her to wake up, and once she did, she would check her phone every few minutes for the rest of the day. When the time came for dance, she would text her letting her know she had to go, texting a bye, and I love you. The moment Dil finished class, the first thing she did was text her girlfriend letting her know she finished. She would plan her schedule around her. She woke up when she woke up, stayed up until she went to sleep, had lunch when she had lunch, etc. Now that all of that disappeared, she didn’t know how to continue with her life.
Over the week, she would spend every minute thinking about her ex. She spends most nights crying, wanting it to be over, wanting to forget it all. She would think about the why’s, the what’s; what did I do wrong? Why now? What could I have done better? She spent her nights crying as if she was mourning a lost family member. She felt stupid. It was only a year, but then again, it was an entire year. This was coming. You should’ve been prepared. You were never going to last. This was bound to happen. You’re overreacting. It’s been a week; get over it.
In a desperate attempt to forget, she threw herself into her schoolwork and dance and exercise. She hadn’t realized how distracted she would get talking to her girlfriend before. She was exhausted. Why was this so hard?
A week had passed, and she felt herself starting to get over it. Of course, she had her moments. She would see her ex pop up in her feed, and her heart would skip a beat. She would see something that remembered Dil of how happy they had been at one point, and it felt like a week ago all over again. She had her moments where she felt lonely, desperate for the attention she had once gotten, in need of affection, reassurance, love. Overall, though, it was slowly getting better.
Dil missed her, of course. She hated that she would never have those experiences with someone like her again, that that chapter is closed and there’s no going back. She did, though, slowly begin to understand this was a chance for her to work on herself, as cliche as it is. For her to have the freedom to be the person she wanted herself to be without the fear of messing something up, of upsetting someone.
‘This is good for you,’ she had to convince herself, ‘it will be okay. You will be okay.’