She took a sip of her oat milk latte, placed it back on the saucer and looked at me: “Do you feel like you are over him now?”
Oh the platitudes we throw around because we have learned them. The question made me smile. This obsession with moving on and be ‘over’ someone.
When I count the months since that day, I shake my head in quiet disbelief. While there is a veil on the memory now, on some days it feels as fresh as last week.
I realised something I tried to fight for a while and have come to accept now:
I don't get over people.
What does that even mean, to ‘get over someone’?
Does it mean you don't think about them anymore?
Does it mean thinking about them doesn't hurt anymore?
Does it mean you don't love them anymore?
What do people mean when they say that?
There are certainly cliché answers to this, the ones we all know, they sound as cliché as the phrase itself - but I'm not interested in cliché, never have been, never will. The quick fix, the stuff people just say because that's what you have to say.
When you loose someone you love, I guess there's an organic process of continuing to live your life: you have new experiences, make new connections, you naturally heal partly through the joyful things and partly through the pain you have to feel.
Slowly things don't hurt as much and the memories don't sting as sharply - but does that mean you're over someone?
I don’t think it does. Not if you feel the way I feel at least. I am at peace. And I am happy. I am grateful. Life is gorgeous right now. But thinking about them will still hurts sometimes.
I don't get over people.* I don’t know how. Which part do you switch off for it to not affect you any longer?
I still read a certain name somewhere and feel a sting inside, I hear a song or pass a place that holds a memory and I am back there. I still remember the touch that started it all, I remember conversations and laughter in the middle of the night. I still re-read old cards and letters from ten years ago. I can not delete photos from my phone because it feels like deleting my history. How will I remember people and stories when I am 80 years old without the images that tell those stories? My memory on its own is shockingly bad.
I don’t want to forget. I want to heal but I don’t want to forget and I suppose that’s what makes ‘moving on’ a tricky beast.
Because in order to heal don’t you have to forget a little?
What if you don’t?
What if healing didn’t involve forgetting?
What I have landed on is that ‘getting over’ someone to me just looks like the Tonkins model of grief:
It doesn’t get smaller, my life just grows bigger around it.
I don't get over people. Not really. Not ever. I still think about people from years ago with tenderness - mind you people from just a few months ago.
Wherever it is possible, I prefer not to cut people off completely but instead move them to the back.** I have a “front row” in my life and that is where my closest circle sits. Everyone else is seated behind them and there’s levels to that.
I found that cutting people off just hurts me. It’s not how I operate, it causes me infinite pain.
If I have loved someone then they stay with me forever. And I have accepted that. I am not ashamed of it. I don’t put a timeline on myself and I am proud of the capacity my heart holds to love someone. The alternative is to always run, to always look for the next thing, to distract myself, to numb the emotion - and I prefer remaining engaged with it. Engaged with life.
Cheers to never letting go.
* does not apply to people who have actively harmed me.
**harmful people definitely get kicked out
Thank you for putting words to something I have wondered about for so long but had never really found the words to articulate.
This is something I’ve been reflecting on for a while now, so this is so timely. Your admission that you don’t get over people, and people you love are with you forever is so brave to me because I do put a time on “getting over” things and I can be so hard on myself about this. I feel inspired to sit with my thoughts on this subject, journal and hopefully be able to come to truths like you did in this beautiful piece. Thanks for sharing! x