I Just Did 4 Things That Scared the Sh*t Out of Me

Three months post-breakup, I came to the realization that I was stuck at a standstill. 

Over months of intentional healing, I had successfully whittled the pain left in my heart down to a dull ache. But that ache—however mild—was proving to be persistent. 

It wasn’t hard to figure out why. I was still in regular contact with many of his friends and family members (whether through messages or just interacting on Instagram), pictures of the two of us would crop up on my iPhone’s memories, and I could see him regularly interacting with my blog posts. 

And yet, for weeks and weeks, I did nothing to avoid these incessant reminders of our past together. 

Why? Because keeping myself tethered to him—even distantly—was comforting. It was a lot scarier to picture our lives overlapping by 0% than to be stuck in this purgatory. 

So, anytime I would think of unshackling myself completely, my fearful self would argue back that none of these things were a big deal. I would still be able to move on. 

But the truth is that when our wounds are constantly being poked and prodded at, it’s obviously a lot harder—if not near-impossible—to heal from them. 

And my wounds, though I was trying to ignore them, were constantly being jabbed at by maintaining contact. 

Ultimately, it was harming my journey and my process. 

The realization hit me like a freight train when I was at a personal growth retreat at the Haven Institute on a small island in BC, Canada last week. 

There was a woman in my program that was the spitting image of a woman who, throughout our relationship, I had held a lot of resentment and jealousy towards. They even had the same first name (“Dear Lord, you were put here by the universe to torture me,” was my first thought when this lovely woman introduced herself). 

Seeing this woman all day, every day for five days straight was hard. And it also led to an important realization (one that seems obvious in retrospect): connecting with his friends and family were acting as little needle attacks on my healing journey. Each one may not have been harmful individually, but the constant barrage sucked. 

A lot. 

I could no longer pretend that any of this was okay anymore. 

So, I took a deep breath and, over the course of a few days, did all the things I had been scared to do to release myself: 

• Deleted our entire WhatsApp chat history

• Removed all his friends and family from Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook

• Hid all the photos of us on my phone

• Removed him and his friends as subscribers to my blog

Throughout each of these actions, I cried—the emotional hit was larger than I had anticipated. 

But the strength to carry them out was a gift. 

I now have more confidence than ever that in another few months, I’ll be proud of my progress in moving onwards and upwards.