How To Heal After They Leave

Watching someone you cared about walk out of your life is one of the most painful experiences you will ever endure. In endurance, there is strength. Robert Frost once said that the only way out is through, so allow yourself to navigate blindly through the healing process, and cope in whatever ways are necessary for you to hold on to your own sanity.

Personally, I found that the following helped me heal immensely:

Step 1: Scream “FUCK THE PATRIARCHY!” and chop off all of your hair. Dye it a hundred different colors, until you find the one shade that they never touched.

Step 2: Clean. Treat every surface around your house as if it were your mind. Declutter. Scrub away the bad memories that they left you with.

Step 3: Rearrange the furniture in your house so the environment feels new, like one that they never set foot in.

Step 4: Burn some sage. Cleanse your environment of their vibes; they are no longer welcome here.

Step 5: Burn everything. Their clothes, gifts they gave you, pictures, the clothes you wore the last time you saw them. Just burn it. Sometimes, the physical representation of watching the things that you thought mattered turn into nothing, into ash, will help you let go. Realize for the first time that orange is actually your favorite color.

Step 6: Surround yourself with people who actually care about you. Or, if your trust issues have reached an all-time high, at least make the effort to reach out and keep in touch with a couple of people who you feel comfortable talking to about the situation. Make the effort to stay consistent with them and talk to them on a regular basis. Actively listen to them and what they have going on in their life, as well. They will keep you grounded, and from getting lost in your own head. They will also provide you with the distraction that you need so you aren’t thinking about the asshole who left 24/7.

Step 7: Keep yourself busy. Project your anger and pain and all other unpleasant emotions into a healthy medium. Start some kind of an art project. Start a garden. Repaint your living room. Find the miracle in their absence. Create something beautiful for yourself in the physical, mental, and emotional areas of your life that they no longer occupy.

Step 8: Write about it. Get all that gross residual emotion out of you, and format it in a way that might help others who are going through the same struggle as you. Reflect, and understand what happened and what beautiful lessons you can take from your experience and pass on to others. Forgive them for leaving. Forgive yourself for letting them hurt you so badly when they did.

Step 9: Look around. Take in the beauty that you created for yourself in their absence. Celebrate your strength for pulling yourself through such a traumatic experience.

Step 10: Pray for them. Send good vibes out into the Universe and hope that they finally found what they were looking for. Be thankful, for the first time, that it wasn’t you.