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I walk in the front door, and it’s quiet. I feel numb as I walk through the house and place my pocketbook on the dining room table.

I take a breath as the emptiness fills me to my core. He is gone. He has been gone for some time.

Each minute that passes feels like hours. Each hour feels like weeks. Each week feels like months. Time is slowly moving along, yet it’s hardly moving at all.

Our love story was rather epic. He swept me off my feet when I wasn’t looking. I had just gotten out of a long-term relationship that wasn’t going anywhere, and I was excited about being on my own.

Then he walked into my life, and nothing was the same. Our romance was perfect. Our passion was intense. He was my best friend. He was my lover. He was everything I ever dreamed of.

We were together for years. We made a life together. We built a home together. He was my world. But things changed. Things got hard. Things got complicated. We couldn’t figure out how to fix our screwed-up relationship. We were different people, and then it was over.

I can’t even feel him anymore. It’s been so long, yet I yearn to feel something—to feel anything of him. But I feel nothing.

It still hits me every single time I walk into the house we once shared together. It doesn’t matter what we do to try to forget, because nothing works. We can’t drink them away. We most definitely can’t f*ck them away either. All of this just numbs our feelings for a little while, but they come back tenfold.

Why do we miss someone after they are gone? Why is it so hard to move on?

We are lonely. It doesn’t matter how or why we ended; we are just flat-out lonely. We miss having that person by our side, in our bed, and someone to talk to or listen to us.

Loneliness has a way of distorting how we feel. We miss the version of the person they were when things were good. But that person doesn’t exist to us in that way anymore. We need to realize that loneliness is an asshole and will screw with our heads. It is not the person we actually miss; it is the connection with another human. So we must use this time to connect with ourselves, and the loneliness will go away.

We lost our confidence along the way. Whether we leave someone or someone leaves us, it breaks our confidence in a million little pieces. We feel as though we are incapable of finding our forever person. We feel as though there was something wrong with us that they were willing to let us go so easily. But we can always build our confidence back. It will take some work, but we need to be kind to ourselves. We need to visualize ourselves as we want to be, then make that happen.

We only remember the good times. It’s almost as if the moment it ends, all the bad memories disappear and we only remember the good sh*t. So we must write down all the bad memories, not to keep them forever, but to keep it real when only the good memories want to stay in our minds. We are going to burn the list at a later date.

We are afraid to be alone. The thought of being alone for the rest of our lives is scary as f*ck. But we will not be alone forever. It might feel like it, but that moment will pass. We have ourselves, our amazing friends, our family, our work, and the list of all the people who love us and are in our lives for the long haul.

When we don’t get closure, the unknown feels torturous. It makes us wonder. We question everything. Not knowing opens the door to endless reasons for anything and everything. But closure doesn’t matter. Who the heck cares how the hell we got here? They were not our people. That’s all we need to know.

We are grieving the potential of what the relationship could have been. We are holding on to the life our hearts wanted, not the life we were actually living, which ended.

We keep reminding ourselves that what we wanted just wasn’t what happened. We don’t always get what we want. But sometimes, what we need is not something we expected. It might surprise us when we least expect it.

We may also have regret for hurting someone. Regret for what more we should have or could have done to fix things when we realized they were broken. They can be important learning tools. We can write down our regrets, learn from them, and, then, let them go.

It was familiar to us. We are creatures of habit. We become addicted to a certain way of living. When it’s taken away from us, our mind, heart, and soul go through withdrawal, which can be extremely painful. The pain feels unbearable. We can become obsessed and unable to move forward. It won’t be easy, but we need to break the denial of the relationship we were in. Getting back together won’t solve the problems it had. We have to accept the fact the relationship is over. And we need to stop convincing ourselves it would be different if we only got back together.

We might still be in contact with them in some sort of way, which brings up all sorts of confusion, including mixed feelings. Even if we have no direct contact, we can see their life through social media. We are seeing their new life without us in it, and that hurts. One piece of advice: delete them from all social media, block their number, because they don’t exist in our lives anymore.

But how do we move on from someone we are not ready to let go of? How do we move on when we can’t?

After we realize and examine the reasons why we actually miss them, we can begin the healing process.

Forgiveness.

The healing process begins with forgiveness. I never actually knew what this meant. I didn’t understand how this would help me at all. But later, I understood that it is not just about forgiving the other person, which is necessary, but digging down really deep within and forgiving ourselves. We might not even think we did anything wrong, but there is a part of us who actually blames us. And we need to find that part and forgive them.

We are all humans, and this relationship thing is hard. Most of us are learning as we go. A relationship takes two people. And sometimes, it breaks down and cannot be fixed. But it’s no one’s fault. We must forgive the other person as much as we forgive ourselves. Whatever happened, happened. At the end of the day, it didn’t work, and forgiving releases the anger we may feel and helps us move on.

Acceptance.

We have to accept the fact that it didn’t work out. We must let go of the hurt, pain, confusion, and doubt. This was the best thing that has happened to us, but we have to believe that something better can come.

Acceptance is one of the most powerful healing mechanisms we can do for ourselves. We are able to accept what we can’t change, and, therefore, we can heal into a new, better life.

Self-care.

Self-care has endless possibilities. It is learning how to love ourselves. It is eating healthy and exercising. It is giving ourselves permission to treat ourselves to something fun, like a vacation or a new pocketbook. It’s spending time with loved ones. It is spending time with ourselves.

This is learning how to be alone and completely satisfied with ourselves, our lives, and the amazing people who are here with us.

Time.

Time will heal every broken heart. Time will make us stronger. Time will be what we need to save ourselves. We just need to let time do its thing. As long as we do the initial work to heal, time is going to hand us a new f*cking life. Time doesn’t move along for no reason. It moves along to bring us to where we are going.

And just like that, a new chapter begins.