So recently my laptop had a stroke. I got the dreaded blue screen of death after uninstalling some bloatware that came with Adobe PDF viewer, and apparently it didn’t uninstall correctly. I spent about 4 hours trying to do a system restore to a couple days earlier and luckily, after all that hard work, I still kept getting blue screens. There was only one thing left to do: reset my PC and reinstall Windows. I was able to keep most of my files, but one thing that got deleted was my conversation history on Skype. When I rebooted my laptop after the install, my heart sank when I noticed the chat history was gone. That was the last connection I had to my ex. Our private messages to each other, all neatly archived by date on Skype.

I’d deleted everything related to her except this one thing. After the breakup, I never looked at it, and it slowly receded down the list on recents where it would stay untouched for weeks. After about a month, when I was feeling a little better about the breakup, I decided to open it again. I immediately saw our last messages to each other, our goodbyes. But instead of scrolling up, I hit Ctrl+F to find specific conversations I’d remembered us having from months ago. Those conversations that took place during some of the happiest moments of my life. I knew it was a bad idea to look at them, but I did it anyway. I wanted to touch that happiness, if only for a brief moment, in my own memories. Of course, it always left me sadder afterwards, even when I’d told myself I wouldn’t let that happen, that I was okay now. But no state of being ‘okay’ could compete with the utter joy and completeness I’d felt with her.

But now even that was gone. I felt it’s loss weigh me down more than it should have. It felt like those memories would disappear now, as if the happiest moments of my life never even existed. My last piece of her was gone. I would have nothing left of the love we once shared. That was kind of depressing, for a day. Then, I moved on. She isn’t a big part of my life anymore, and although I love her, I don’t feel sad about her anymore. I guess it proved to me that I didn’t really need her in my life anymore to be happy.

I went about my life like normal until a couple days ago, when I remembered that my old phone still had those archived conversations. Every time I would think about opening it to see if they were still there, I would get distracted by something and forget. That is, until today. I finally opened it up, and as you may be aware, Skype for Android does not have a Ctrl+F feature, so you have to manually scroll up through all of the messages. Also, I quickly learned that my phone didn’t archive more than about a week of messages. I looked over them, for the first time since the breakup. That last week, that was a very painful week for me. Reading the messages reminded me that it was a very painful week for the both of us. More than anything, reading those messages reminded me again of the reason I had to breakup with her. Looking back, I am certain I made the right decision. Every moment since the breakup has not been as torturous as that week before it. Maybe it was because I never had to worry about our relationship anymore once it was over, and all that stress was taken away. Whatever the reason, I avoided a lot of heartache by ending it when I did.

Reading it now didn’t affect me in any noticeable way. While reading some of the most painful memories from just a few months ago, I felt, utterly normal. It’s weird. Is it weird? That I’m okay, or even happy without her in my life. That I’m glad that our relationship is over even though I know I’m still in love with her. I didn’t think that was possible. That I could actually love someone, and still be fine without them in my life. I’m sure one day I will find someone else and love her more, so it’s not like I’ve closed off my heart to anyone else. I even have another crush, well celebrity crush, on Holly Taylor from The Americans (amazing show!!). But yeah, it seems like a chapter of my life is closing, but there is still an entire book left for me to read. And I’m excited to find out what happens next!