This is the recovery phase. This is where it all gets better.

The tears have fallen, your eyes are dry, and you can now sleep at night, just a little easier.

Every song you hear, every couple you see in public, every time someone mentions his name — it no longer drags you back to that time when you thought you’d found your “one.”

Much to your surprise, you feel okay. You don’t feel so lonely now… and you actually start to look at the idea of singledom as an opportunity for growth rather than a life sentence for being alone.

It feels good, right? Because it took so damn long to get here, and you so badly deserve it. We all do. We deserve to be more than okay on our own. We deserve happiness.
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You realize it’s all about perspective… about how you look at things. Whether you see this as a punishment or a lesson, that is up to you. And where you go from here, well that’s your choice as well. But just let me say this: Congratulations. You’re here because you’ve wept. You’ve felt scared, alone, and angry. You’ve spent all your time remembering the good and forgetting the bad — the reasons why you ended up here in the first place. You’ve been missing him immensely to a point where you’ve felt like you were drowning in grief. But time has allowed you to let go more and more with every day, and now it’s all becoming a distant memory.

All in all, you’ve triumphed over the grief of something you once loved, and now the only way to go is forward.

Now, when you least expect it, someone new will come along — the right someone — and it will be a refreshing taste of what love and a healthy relationship should be. But until then, you do you. You live life knowing that you are whole on your own. You came into this world as an individual, and you don’t need anybody else to complete you.

The hard part is done, so from here on out, move on and enjoy.

*The above piece was written as a collaboration between myself and Fiddler Poetry, whom I thank for his poetic words and input and for the opportunity to collaborate on a life experience with which we are all familiar: moving on, recovering… from whatever your situation may be.