I need a young priest & an old priest. I have to perform an exorcism & I don't know how. They don't teach that to us Protestants, you know. ;)This post is going to be difficult to write. It's not that I don't know what to write - it's that I'm afraid of what will come out. In the most basic terms, I need to exorcise the ghost of my ex-boyfriend from my life. Tomorrow is the exact date on which he broke up with me last year. Twelve months later, I feel 99.9% better, but still not completely free.
But how do I do get there, how do I extract the man from my life? I've spent the last year trying to release myself. I erased old emails, deleted old photographs, cut up his love letters & gleefully threw them in the trash. I emailed him a few days before his wedding (he got engaged to his ex-girlfriend five months after we broke up & they got married six weeks ago) and asked him not to contact me ever again.
Yet he's still there. A shadowy ghost - haunting the back of my brain, making me second-guess myself, spurring comparisons to Nick. And I want to be very clear on this - Nick trounces him in every area, every time. In two months, Nick has made me happier than I think AR ever could have made me.
I feel that I need to exorcise AR's ghost to move forward with Nick. It's a tough thing to do, though. AR was the first man I dated for longer than three months, the first man to whom I said "I love you", the first man with whom I discussed marriage, the first man to live with me. How far do I have to go to erase that? Do I have to sell the Christmas & birthday presents his parents gave me? Do I have to give away the slippers his grandmother knitted for me? Do I have to throw away the pencil sketch of one of my favorite scenes that he drew for me?
I wish it was simpler. I wish I had never said those words to him. I wish he had just moved to New York & we had forgotten each other. I wish this post made a little more sense. ;) In the end, he didn't deserve to be with me forever & I'm so thankful that he realized that, even before I did. But how, how, how do I make his ghost go away?
6 comments:
That post makes complete sense. You just go as far as it takes.
You will never be rid of his ghost, you just have to learn to live with it. Once you accept that, it won't seem as bad. I have a theory about it: people who have a profound impact on your life create new wrinkles in your brain. just because they are gone and you WANT to forget them, doesn't erase those wrinkles. They are always with you. You'll create new ones that will make the old ones less and less important but they will still be there. Have I been corny enough for you yet?
I really believe that people come into our lives for a reason. His purpose was to show you that you can care a lot about someone who is not "the one" for you.
I agree to accept that you will never forget him and be glad that you have a wonderful new man in your life who treats you how you should be treated. This post made complete sense to me... and I'm glad I'm not the only one who still thinks about exes!
Thanks for the advice, ladies. :) I think I realized that he'll always be around. I just wish it wasn't so much. But, it's only been a year, really. I imagine it will get better & better over time.
You may have noticed that I also have my own ghost in the form of Callum who occasionally features on my blog. It's a bit different because we never actually had a relationship, just talked about that possibility lots over a prolonged period. Oh and I am in a situation where I have to see every day of my life (we work together).
As happy as I am with my life now I can't rid of him entirely from my head. It drives me mad! (I feel a post coming on on that subject soon.)
However, I can see alternative than my current approach which is to hope it gets better with time and to just come to terms with the fact that he is floating around my head at the moment in his stupid white sheet! :-)
It DOES get better and better over time. I bet that a year or two from now, he'll cross your mind only every so often, and eventually you'll find yourself not thinking of him hardy at all. I myself had a longtime BF before I got engaged/married. It's been 4 years and honestly, I think it took 2, 2 1/2 years to really be over it entirely.
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