i think things

because who wouldn’t want to glow up after having their heartbroken? or hey, maybe you were the one breaking hearts, i don’t judge. (i will disclose that this is more for those who’ve gotten out of a negative relationship/left it on bad terms). either way, dumper or dumpee, breaks up put you through an emotional rollercoaster. how do you bounce back? adjust to the single life? not break down every time someone mentions their name? here’s my top five tips to heal from heartbreak:

1. closure is important,  but don’t get it too early. if it’s possible, give you and your newly made ex some time before a closure talk. straight after a breakup, you’ll have millions of unprocessed emotions. figure out what you need from that closure talk. is it just your stuff back? or do you need answers? give yourself time to figure it out, otherwise, it’ll turn int break up sex. and break up sex is a sticky situation if you’ll excuse my pun.

2. you are allowed to feel angry. you are allowed to feel lonely. you are allowed to feel sad. you are allowed to feel guilt. you are allowed to feel shame. you are allowed to feel relieved. you're going through it, you’re gonna get in your feels for a lot of different reasons. every single one of them is okay. you can’t stop it happening, and it's personal to everyone, but it’s also part of the healing process so don’t stop yourself from getting in your feels when it hurts. journal. talk to friends. a counsellor if you need to.

3. spend time with friends but spend time by yourself too. the people you surround yourself with should be positive and supportive (and hey, your ex is already gone just as well cut off any shitty friends too). whenever you can laugh with them, cry with them, get drunk with them, have deep chats at 3am, but remember that it’s not so bad being alone. remind yourself of life before your partner. if you’re struggling the battle of lonely boredom, ask yourself, what did you use to do before the time you saw them? learn to enjoy your own company.

4. remember the good times you had with them as well as reflecting on the bad. you want to grow from this. reflect on what was wrong about the relationship, learn from it, but remember the good, too. you’re not trying to develop a grudge towards the other person, you're trying to learn from them. 

you will never be who you want to be if you don’t act like that person first.

so you want to be a boss bitch with her shit together? but you’re the complete opposite at the moment and don’t know where to start? well, here are some ideas for you my darling sunshine sandwich.

let’s focus first on who you want to be. what does the best you look like? do they work out? smile more? drink more water? have the confidence to do what they want? what ambitions do they have? what job are they doing? what does their room look like? these are all personal questions you need to ask yourself before you start transforming into that person. once you know who you want to be, the path to becoming them is so much clearer. but, say you don’t know, say you just want to be that bitch whilst you figure the rest out, and trust me that’s okay too, here are some tips (because here’s a little secret that bitch is actually just a girl who loves herself),

get healthy, both mentally and physically. work out, drink more water, if you need to go to therapy then go, take your meds, eat healthier, quit bad habits. your body will love you and even if you don't mean it just yet, you’ll start to say i love you back just to be nice. plus, these are personal achievements. yeah, you did that. you transformed your body and your mind. you did it, not anyone else.

smile. smile at kids, at old people, at people your own age. smile at your family, the grumpy cashier, smile at your friends, smile at the cat walking down the street, smile to yourself every time you see your reflection. try walking all the way home with a smile on your face. you don’t need that smile to be real just yet, sometimes you just need to remind yourself you can smile and that it feels good too.

be polite. whether you mean it or not, tell the cashier or waitress to have a nice day, thank people who hold open doors for you, say please to dinner ladies. make someone’s day with kindness, and beore you even think it, no, you might not make their day, but you might make that shift better for them to get through or make them smile and that should be enough. good things happen to good people. being nice is contagious, spread kindness like its a common cold, infect the world with happiness. pretty soon, the smiles you get back, the “thanks, you too”s will make you mean it.

pay attention in class, even if you hate the subject. raise your hand and contribute. congratulate yourself when you get the right answer and praise yourself for trying when you don’t. use the resources made so readily available to you for good. you hate your physics class? see it as an opportunity to train your mind to be more attentive. your teachers are people too, remind them why they love teaching - it sure isn’t to see a class full of sleepy teenagers ignoring them.

wear the clothes you like. even the ones you feel insecure in. wear that pair of trousers no one else in your college would, hold your head high and watch the compliments roll in. here’s a top tip: confidence doesn’t exist without insecurity that used to thrive. watch people look at you in your favourite outfit and tell yourself they are staring because they like it - not because they don’t. soon, that insecurity won’t exist and gone ill be the clothes he wore too fit in, your kickass personal sense of style will be what makes you feel good.

it’s a weird one this, normally i’m in a shitty mood with things to chat shit about when i post on tumblr (which i think in a way sums up the whole site). today, however, i want to talk about something good.

ask my closest friends throughout time, and they’ll all be able to tell you my opinions on love. you know those 3a.m conversations at sleepovers where you share your darkest secrets, confess your weirdest fantasies and talk about fate? well, at those sleepovers when love comes up i would be the first to happily admit that i think love is bullshit. and not because my parents split up when i was little (they’re still going strong and are happy that way, just to let you know) or because some boy broke my heart too soon, i just think that the concept of love is an odd one. i think it’s glorified lust, at best, and society’s need to fill in the gaps we have nothing better to do during, at worst. not the most optimistic start to a post i said would be positive, i agree, but that’s always my opinion. i can go on rants upon rants about the idea of love, but we won’t get into that right now. despite this, though, i’ve always known that one-day chances are i would tell someone i love them, get married, have kids, the whole shebang really, but that never changed my views. 

and whilst i still do agree with them partly, i must say my thoughts have changed. i love my boyfriend. i really do, even though he’s a prick sometimes, i love him. i think i first realised it whilst i was with him and high. he kissed me and my little mind, which let’s face it was at the same height as the clouds, saw fireworks on the backs of my eyes. no, seriously. it was like a movie moment happening to me in real life and i don’t think i’ll ever forget it. it’s weird being in love with someone. especially for the first time, you have to learn a whole new way of communicating, sharing your time and interests and just how to be a decent boyfriend/girlfriend. there’s no guide. you don't just ask someone out and then have this picture-perfect relationship. it’s hard work; the weirdest kind of work.

today i learnt that you don’t have to just deal with things in relationships. or lie in general, i suppose. sounds weird, i know, but growing up i was always raised with the deal-with-it-yourself-and-shut-up mentality (in the nicest way possible, of course).

as always, i’m learning things that seem so straightforward now that i know them but before it just didn’t seem that way. i mean, shouldn’t i have always known that if you don’t like something to speak up about it? 

in some ways, yes i should have but maybe this is one of lifes many lessons that are meant to be easy and to make you self kick yourself as if to say ‘but it was so obvious!’. maybe i should just be thankful for learning the easy way instead of the hard way, even if it took a while. 

my boyfriend is my biggest thanks for this. slowly but surely, he’s getting me to open up to him about what i really want and what i’m really thinking instead of just answering with what i think i’m supposed to say. i reckon the thing that annoys him most about me is that i don’t talk to him enough about that, i give in-the-middle-answers to most things and this leaves him to a lot of decision making. and i get it, especially when we’re trying to order a takeaway and i’ve told him i don’t mind what we get but then said no to almost everything but pizza. 

there is something hauntingly beautiful about breakups. you burn into ashes only to find yourself reborn - a phoenix. 

my not-so-long-term boyfriend was my first. first boyfriend, first time, and so for him to break up with me over text whilst i was at work stung, to say the least. we had said i love you to each other more times than i can count but it was not in the way the books describe it, not the way my best friend says it to her girlfriend. we were not in love. i think we were in love with the idea of each other and suddenly someone shook him from the daydream and so, of course, he had to let go.

it’s been a total of three days since we broke up. it doesn’t sting so much anymore. his name on my feed still makes me sad and i don’t quite think i could stand to be n the same room as him, but i wouldn't care much to see him with a different girl. 

i crumbled at work when he broke up with me, the man i work with at the cafe saw he tears in my eyes, made me a hot chocolate and let me go home early. he could see i was burnt out, that my ashes need time to fnd their soul again. 

and they did. or, well, they are. and im back to how i was before our relationship and i’m starting to see that it was definitely for the best. i want to love me first. fall in love with myself the way i want to fall in love with someone else before attempting again. i am content being single. happy that the way this all panned out means that i have the whole summer to myself. 

i don’t mean to bring religion into this, especially for those reading that aren’t religious - if you dont care for it then by all mean skip ahead - but i truly elieve that this was god’s doing. he needed a way for me to realise that a relationship does not mean happiness and that you cannot force yourself to love someone if you dont have the ability to love yourself.

i hate the sound of heartbeats. i can’t lay my head on someone’s chest without panicking. it reminds me of the sense of hopelessness i feel before a panic attack.

i can’t make eye contact with you. i’m not trying to be rude, i promise, but there is something inside of me and i dont know why, but i can’t.

i don’t feel safe. there is a dark twist to every situation and there will never be a time that my mind doesn’t find it.

i can’t put my hand up in class. i can't shout out answers i know are correct for fear of being seen as too smart or getting laughed at if i’m wrong. i like to blend in with the thirty other students around me, praying the teacher doesn't like to pick on their pupils.

i can’t talk in a big group fo people, something that would drive any extrovert mad. i love people but shrivel away in fear when they get too close (literally and metaphorically). there are too many things that can go wrong, what if i say the wrong thing? what if i annoy them? what if they hate the sound of my voice more than i do? it gets especially bad when i know that i’ll have to see those people again, i can deal with people not liking me but if i have to sit by them in class every day i’d rather they didn’t. 

i can overthink and analyse everything you say to me. i can tear your sentences to pieces looking for any kind of sign you hate me. when i find it, it will stay in the forefront of my mind, it will help me build a wall between us.

 i can see the end of a friendship or relationship before it even begins. every time it ends with broken promises and tears. you don’t look back but trust me, i do. when asked if i’d rather have twenty friends who aren;t very close or two that are i will always choose the twenty. it will hurt less when they leave. and i am terrified of them leaving.

some days, the really bad days, i can’t leave my house. too overcome by anxiety to venture out into the world where so many things can go wrong. what if i have a panic attack in the supermarket? what if someone looks at me? what if i pull a push door? what if i try to go in a closed shop? what if i have to talk to someone? what if i need to order my own food? what if i get lost? the what ifs go on forever, getting darker and darker and nothing can convince me to leave.