There Is A Journey You Take When A Relationship Ends

“I don’t do relationships.”

That was how all of this began. I never wanted to go through the struggle, the pain, the troubling journey, the constricting lifestyle of a relationship. After a long, arduous and life-altering relationship at an age when I hadn’t even discovered myself, let alone someone else, the last thing I wanted was to go through it all again. To feel dejected, broken, and embarrassed of feeling all these things.

But what I had forgotten was the joy. I forgot the joy of sharing your life with someone that willingly and eagerly takes part in it, yearning to be a focal point. I forgot about the happiness of having someone by your side that wants to make every aspect of your life better and will try anything and everything to make it happen. I forgot the feeling of waking up next to someone that you had hoped would spend the night. I forgot the fulfilling, comforting and beautiful journey that is a happy, solid relationship.

Or maybe I chose not to remember them. In any case, you were insistent on making it happen, and make it happen you did. You reminded me of all these things, you showed me that my perspective was messed up. You proved to me that avoiding relationships wasn’t the answer to maintaining a peaceful lifestyle. Rather, you achieve that peaceful life by avoiding the unhealthy negativity from a failing liaison and looking for what makes you happy. And you made me happy. Our time together was eye-opening to say the least. It was a combination of bliss, pleasure, happiness, and excitement in a way that words would never truly capture in its glory.

Everything that I had chosen to forget seemed utterly stupid. I myself couldn’t understand where or how I could have possibly gotten those thoughts. Until now.

Now that we’re here, I remember it all. The pain, the struggle, the troubling journey, I remember it all now. But these are not attributable to the relationship. The agony isn’t from the relationship; it’s from the journey after the relationship. The process of returning to yourself, whoever that may be at the moment. The path of rediscovering life as you used to know it. Life as me instead of life as us.

It will happen, it is inevitable. Nothing is forever. All pains come to an end, whether it takes a few days, a few months, or a few years. Along the way, the days will be long, the nights will be sleepless, everyday tasks will be mundane, and everything that you thought you knew about yourself will be questioned by others and by yourself. But you will return to yourself. I will return to myself.

I just don’t want to yet.