journal entry vol 1: moving on?

Time heals all wounds, right?

Sometimes I wonder if he thinks about me when he listens to our songs. If Noah Kahan comes on Spotify shuffle and for a brief moment he remembers hearing “Stick Season” for the first time as we spent the night running errands in my new car, kissing while stopped at the painfully long red light by Target. Or if “Crazier Things” begins playing and he recalls listening to that song 15 times on the night he ended things.

I swear I haven’t thought about him in a while, but tonight I am. Sue me.

They say time heals all wounds, and I know it does. This time last year I still talked to him everyday. He was finishing up his exchange year at Stony Brook and we would still hang out occasionally.

In a couple of months it’ll be a year since I found out the girl he called “irrelevant” and “obsessive” from his home school, the University of Manchester, couldn’t have been further from that. I can’t believe I ever once wrote that he made me believe in mankind, that I told him he was still a good person even as he was breaking my heart.

I’m a different person now than I was then. I moved out of my parent’s house, quit my job working for CNET in exchange for grad school and now live, ironically, in London, only a couple hours from him in Manchester.

Over the past couple months, I’ve gone on a date with nearly every eligible Hinge bachelor in London, or at least it feels like I have. I’ve met so many new people with incredible life stories and big ambitions. I’ve taken big risks both in my career and in my relationships.

However, no matter how much I change my surroundings, I still have nights like these where I think of him. Now I just think of him in a different way. I no longer miss him; nor am I even really mad at him. I guess I just feel bad for him.

I feel bad that he’ll never truly find what he’s looking for because he’s unable to face the many problems staring back at him in the mirror.

I feel bad that he’s let so many good things in his life slip away simply out of fear of trying, and will continue to let so many more good things pass him by.

I mainly feel bad for her, though. I’m not sure about the current stage of their relationship, on social media it seems like it’s nonexistent, but I feel bad that even after she found out the things he said about her she still went back to him.

I used to be jealous that she got to go back to him, now I’m just sympathetic. When I found out the horrible lies he spread about me I could barely hear his name without wincing. She’s younger than me, she’ll eventually learn that she deserves so much better.

Not to wallow in my own self pity, but while I’m at it, I do also feel sorry for myself. Partly for the fact that I let such a below average looking boy (he doesn’t get to be called a man) ruin my confidence. Joking, of course — kind of. But really I’m just upset because I lost that naive part of myself where I gave people chances without thinking of the ways they could hurt me.

I never considered myself a naive person necessarily but I never once thought someone I cared for so deeply would go around telling people blatant lies. I don’t know how long it will take me to be able to freely trust again, but I’m working on it.

Time does heal all wounds. This past year proves that.

Despite what it may seem, I’m grateful for all the highs and lows. From that I learned who I am as an adult, how resilient I can be and the love I have left to give. As Daisy Kent from The Bachelor said “If I could love the wrong person that much, imagine how much I could love the right one.”

One year ago I was still holding onto the hope that me moving to London may change his mind about the future of our relationship. That he actually meant all the loving things he once said to me.

I know better now. I know that the person who’s right for me won’t lie to me or knowingly lead me on or take his own insecurities out on me.

He won’t meet my extended family then question how I could possibly think he’d want something serious. He won’t go around telling people that he spoke to me out of pity while telling me that all he wants to do is make me happy.

Now I’m smarter, on my way to better people and better places.

Except for Manchester.

Fuck that.