What does breaking up feel like?

It fucking sucks.

I'm sorry boys and girls, but things really don't end up like they do in fairy tales. You don't leave someone, lead entirely separate lives for almost a year and then get back together like you dream you would. For so long, I'd imagined him turning up at my door, or perhaps dropping me a text when we're both sober. I'd imagine we would dramatically run into each others' arms. But guess what? That only happens in the movies. Really, life just gets in the way and that's the reality of it. You can never predict who the other person would meet during the time you spend apart. Hell you can't predict who you would meet in that one year too. Life's full of these curveballs you don't see coming right at you.

It's painful. No one said it wouldn't be. Well they warned you but you went with it anyway.

What's more painful is watching the person you love, love someone else. When you know very well that they've long moved on without you. It's when you scroll through your Instagram newsfeed and very accidentally open a post that rips your heart into tiny fragments. It leaves you in tears, but you still can't help scrolling through her feed to see his face - those eyebrows and that smile, the arms around a waist that used to be yours, the friends that you used to hang out with together.

First comes the tears. A lot of them. It's like you can no longer control what slides down along your cheeks from the side of your eyes. It's the sleepless nights, the shaking and the muffled sounds you force into your pillow at 4 in the morning. It's when you wake up gripping the sheets thinking that he's lying next to you. It's when you pretend it's normal for your tears to join the water when you're taking a long shower. It's the puffy eyes you wake up with in the morning and cuss when you look in the mirror because you know you're expected to be stronger than this.

It's the constant expectation that you should've long let this go. I hated that look in other peoples' eyes when they know you're still hung up. It's the, "After all this time???" accusations. It's the constant gossip that he's long moved on but you're the pathetic one still stuck at the very same place.

Then it's the drunk Telegram messages. It's the stupid texts you send that keeps taking you back over and over again. It's the huge HELLOs you shout when you type his name into the search bar on Telegram despite deleting the previous thread. It's the unhealthy declarations that he still cares about you and how you're doing. But: he doesn't love you anymore. You read (maybe 3 or 4 times) and delete the entire conversation the next morning when you're sober and you mentally chide yourself for sending those messages in the first place. What does that make you? Only pathetic, nothing more. You're degrading yourself and you hate what you're doing but you can't help it. Can you really not help it?

It's the constant telling yourself that everything is going to be okay. That one day you would let go and move on too. That you would find someone that means more to you than this. But really, when is this "one-day"? You see some of the people around you move on and find someone else. Then you ask yourself what's taken you this long?

Let's be honest here: I struggled for the longest time. I've been trying to keep myself afloat most of these one and a half years and if you've been around you would know that. I honestly thought being on exchange would change things around but I feel like I sunk a little further when I came home. It's almost unbelievable that it's been such a long time.

No one said it'll be easy. It's difficult. It's so so so fucking difficult but I swear it's not impossible to get through. There are some days that I feel like I've forgotten what it's like to have him by my side. But on bad days I feel that absence so strongly, despite it being such a long time ago.

I thought I would be able to handle it. I've been alone. Come on, I don't need someone with me to survive. But I sorely underestimated how emotionally attached I've become over the years and how difficult it was for me to let go. To let go of someone I care about so so so much, and with whom I spent such a long time building my life around and together, intertwined.

It's been one and half years. And this is what I've learnt: it really sucks being the one stuck in the same spot where he left you.

It also remains a decision I'll look back on and regret but I know nothing I do would change a thing. If everything happens for a reason then this should lead to something better.

There's one thing I am certain about - I never, ever want to feel this way ever again. And I pray that this never happens to anyone I care about, ever.

If you're reading this: I truly, truly wish you all the happiness in this world.