Step 1: Go to the kitchen.Â
Step 2: Grab a spoon and your favorite tub of ice cream (mine is cookies and cream).Â
Step 3: Go back to your bedroom.Â
Step 4: Sit on your bed.Â
Step 5: Eat.Â
Step 6: Cry.Â
You don’t have to do it in that exact order, but it’s just a suggestion. You may want to cry in between each step and that’s okay. Maybe you can’t eat ice cream, and that’s okay too.Â
Ice cream definitely helped me heal, but it’s certainly not the only thing that I did. Ending things with this person was very challenging but it was something that I knew I needed to do in order to protect my mental health and start to feel better again. At this point I had become so mentally distraught and had completely lost myself to this person, so it was definitely time to end things. I remember asking my mom, “Should I keep talking to him?” and the shake of her head as well as her expression were enough for me to know what to do.Â
From that moment, we never spoke again and I freed myself from something that I had no idea had been weighing me down for so long. Truth be told, I blamed myself for a lot of the things I was feeling and thought that there was something deeply wrong with me. Through loving him I had forgotten how to love myself and this was something that I knew would take time to heal from.Â
Time is exactly what I gave myself. I knew things were not going to be easy and that there were going to be moments where I was going to want to cry or scream heartbreak songs in the car, and that’s exactly what I did. Sometimes I would come home from school and just let myself cry. There were moments where I could just feel a “bad moment” coming on and knew I was going to have to take that time to let myself just feel. I journaled a lot and listened to songs I could relate to. At the time, Tate Mcrae’s album “I Used to Think I Could Fly” was on repeat for me because I could relate to so many of the songs. Â
I didn’t do all of this alone. My mom’s reassurance was the last push that I needed to make the choice that would set me free, and she was really my rock during all of this. She saw the way that he had treated me and listened with an open ear to all of the stories I would share and all of the new details she would learn. One thing about relationships (especially toxic ones) is that you often do not realize that certain things are wrong or hurtful until later on. It took me some time to put the pieces together about many of the things that were happening to me, and my mom was always there to help me reprocess these kinds of things.Â
My friends also served as a great form of support. They were there to listen to me vent and listen to all the things I went through. They often gave me advice, especially since many of them had gone through similar things. I have one friend in particular whom I met not much longer before I left him, and she gave me such amazing advice that I still carry into my life to this day. One thing in particular that she taught me was to practice kindness with myself and to not carry that blame. I held onto this during my healing and have found that this piece of advice helped me unlearn all of the things he made me feel about myself. I learned that the things I was feeling were completely okay and that I needed to treat my heart with a sense of gentleness.Â
By learning to not blame myself, I was able to develop a sense of confidence and therefore knew that the things that happened to me were not my fault and were not a reflection of me. This of course took time, but I was able to develop a feeling of pride in myself for being able to better understand why the things that happened to me did and know that I could improve things for myself.Â
While doing all of this, I made sure to continue to live my life and do the things I enjoyed doing. I had girls nights with my friends, traveled, and even started college. I took care of myself each day and made sure to only do what I could handle, but I reminded myself that things would get easier eventually. I had a lot of support by my side, whether it be from my mom, friends, or therapist, and for that I was lucky. I definitely could not have come to the point I am at now without all of these things.Â
Oh, and I guess ice cream helped too.