When we’re broken-hearted, we tend to do some really dumb stuff. And I don’t just mean impulsive things like dying your hair or going shopping — that’s actually normal.
I mean “leaving a drunken voicemail of you singing Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License” at 4 AM”-kinda dumb stuff.
It’s cool. We’re all human, and we all go a little crazy when facing the harsh reality of romantic rejection.
While I’m totally down to use it as an excuse for a lot of things (fender benders, speeding tickets, junk food binges, sleeping in, missing work, etc.), after a certain period, that heartbreak becomes a crutch we use that keeps us from moving on.
Or from doing anything at all. Sometimes heartbreaks can be truly crippling and leave you bedridden with tears for weeks.
Yes, I’ve met many people (myself included) who milk the ‘sad feels’ of a breakup far longer than they should have just because they were afraid of change.
We’re terrified of making any moves because we don’t want to experience that heartache again.
To keep ourselves safe, we lie and say we’re still “going through stuff,” hoping no one would expect anything of us — ever.
But the thing about safety, especially emotional safety, is that it’s an illusion. It’s not real. It’s just a curtain we hide behind because we don’t want to take responsibility for anything.
We don’t want to be the ones who mess up.
One of the lies we tell ourselves to stay in that sad but seemingly safe place is that we need closure. We just can’t get over the breakup until we fully understand every little detail that led up to it.
You don’t need to know any of those details. They’re likely to hurt you in the long run anyway, and we don’t need more pain after that.
We say it out loud like it makes sense, but it doesn’t. We don’t really need closure.
Why the eff would you ever want to know why someone stopped wanting to be with you? How could knowing something so sad and awful make you feel good enough to move on?
People tell me I’m dumb for wanting to live in such a naive space. But if nothing productive will come out of that kind of conversation about closure, why have it?
You’re smart. You can probably figure out the role you played at the end of the relationship.
You don’t need someone to spell it out for you to move forward.
It’s time to stop waiting for people to save you and start saving yourself instead.
Originally written by Emily Blackwood on YourTango
Featured image via Erriko Boccia on Unsplash
