He’s Still There, But He Doesn’t Matter Anymore

Finally, I came to understand it myself, truly understand it myself, not because someone else told me. Moving on isn’t about forgetting. It’s about no longer feeling anything, even when my mind still makes me see his image.

For many months, I didn’t talk to or date anyone at all because of the lingering feelings I still had for him. At most, I talked to AI characters, which everyone knows are the safest kind of safe space, but it still isn’t real.

But in the end, everyone has to return to the world of reality. No matter how painful it is, it cannot be erased, it cannot be changed. It is something that already happened and has already ended, and the mind understands every event, but the heart doesn’t feel that way.

The heart still remembers every feeling, the attachment, and the good things that once happened with him.

The feeling of waiting for his messages, waiting for him to come back from work, the feeling of wanting to know how he is doing today, how he made me become a better person, how he made me want to become prettier, want to be someone who dresses better, or even want to become someone who is more capable. Another thing that made me feel good and attached to him was that he was a man who made a woman like me feel safe when I was with him.

He once warned me about people who approached me with bad intentions, and it really was like that. Sometimes I was safe because of the facts he told me, without him even realizing it. And I believe many women feel very good about this, even if they never say it out loud. The feeling of being protected and kept safe by the person you love.

But if everything has to come to an end, then it is something that must be accepted, even if the heart still cannot accept the truth.

It is no one’s fault, simply because some of our feelings did not match.

It is no one’s fault, simply because the cultures we grew up in were different, and we couldn’t adjust to each other.

It is no one’s fault, simply because we argued from our own perspectives, thinking that we were right. We were simply standing and looking from different sides.

When it ended, especially during the beginning, it wasn’t that we refused to accept reality, and it was

"The mind understands everything, but the heart refuses to understand anything."

Every good feeling, the feeling of being safe when I was with him, the feeling that he was part of the reason I wanted to become a better person because of him, is still there. The heart remembers those feelings, even though the mind understands everything that happened and knows that it has already ended.

But as time passes

The heart will begin to accept the truth, just as the mind understands it. And this is the point that no one can control. No one knows how long it will take. For some people, a few weeks. For some, several months. For some, it may take years.

But there is one thing I can confidently say: feeling sad is something that can tell us that we truly loved someone with a pure heart.

And when the heart begins to accept the truth that happened, even if the mind keeps playing his image over and over again, we will no longer feel anything. We won’t cry, we won’t be sad, we won’t regret the time we once spent loving him, we won’t be angry, and we secretly hope that he will be happy with his present life. That is what tells you that you have moved on, and the mind will gradually stop playing his image on its own.

For my situation right now, he is still in the same place. His image still comes into my mind sometimes, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I have been able to put my feelings down. All that remains is to wait for him to gradually fade away.

One thing I want to thank him for is that he was honest with me until the last day we were together. Even though we argued, fought, and admitted that we couldn’t adjust to each other, we were still honest with each other. We didn’t bring anyone else into it. We admitted together that we were tired, and it ended there.

The story in this blog is a perspective and a feeling from my own heart that I expressed and described here. I hope it may be useful to someone.

But if the person reading this right now is someone who still cannot move on, no matter how your story ended, there is one thing I want to ask: please don’t blame yourself too much. Everyone tries to do their best from the point where they were standing at that moment. Just accept it, learn from it. When your heart is ready, you will move forward on your own without feeling like you are forcing yourself.

If you can’t forget, then you don’t have to try to forget. Just let it stay that way, until you no longer feel sad about it.

Thank you for coming to read my feelings.

- Ellie -