Call It What You Want

by Alissa DeRogatis

I think the worst part was realizing that somewhere deep down, I knew it the entire time.

I knew he wouldn’t be able to get where I wanted him to. I just hoped that I was wrong. No, we never dated. He’s not an ex-boyfriend. He’s an ex-almost. Maybe that’s all we’d ever be—an incomplete sentence or a book that someone put down halfway through and never picked back up, finished without an ending.

Life got so much better when I stopped looking for love in every guy I met.

You can’t love someone into changing—you shouldn’t have to. I knew that. So why didn’t I believe it?

As time goes on, you start to remember your life before them. You stop reaching for your phone when you see something that reminds you of them. You take the songs that they showed you off of your playlist. Eventually, you start to forget them completely.

his name

it was that they didn’t like what he was doing to me. Stringing me along was what they liked to call it. They didn’t know him the way I did though. I knew that he wanted to try; he just said it himself. I could tell that he was scared that he’d fail, or he wouldn’t live up to my standards. None of that mattered though, because what he didn’t know was that I was already in love with him.

The most important thing that I’ve learned over the last six months is that you need to show up for yourself. I know this might sound bleak, but the only person we really have at the end of the day is ourselves. You’re the one that gets yourself out of bed every morning and tucks yourself in every night. You’re the one that picks yourself up off of the bathroom floor after a few too many. You should always love that person more than someone who broke your heart. If you feel like you lost yourself in a past (or even present) relationship, spend time getting to know who you are. Find new hobbies or fall back in love with old ones. Mine are reading and therapy. Both have been reminders of how beautiful, sometimes sad but mostly beautiful, life is.