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I’ve listened to two books on Audible talking about getting over breakups and how to move on. But they didn’t really resonate with me.

I find that if I can sit with the pain, whatever the situation is, and come up with a sentence that would be the counterbalance of that pain, or neutralize it, I can start to rewire the pathways in my brain and it helps process and move through my healing faster.

Instead of being a victim and feeling sad about how he hurt me, I go to the other side, own my part in it and focus on the reality, too. Instead of looking at the statement, I look at its shadow.

These are the sorts of sentences I’ve come up with:

• He could never be what I wanted or needed him to be
• The connection is dead – There is nobody reaching for me
• There is nothing left to maintain here – I am alone now
• There is no magic here anymore – only memory
• My own mind is projecting good memories onto him – they do not exist, that person is gone (or never truly existed)
• He is not visiting me in spirit (to apologize, etc) – That is me hoping for closure
• I projected safety onto that life – it was never safe

It might sound very simple, but with was a breakthrough to me. (And those really sound like Pearl Jam lyrics.)

Instead of trying to connect with that person in my mind and have a conversation about it, try to get closure, I go the other way. I sit in the absence of closure, the absence of knowledge, the absence of knowing what they were thinking. I don’t assume their thoughts or feelings. I don’t tap into what I *think* I know about them and project it into some story to get closure. A sappy angelic moment where we forgive each other and go our separate ways. I sit in the truth that I am alone, nobody is coming. I am alone.

It fucking hurts, but really, truly feeling the starkness of it seems to help me. And if you aren’t emotionally strong enough to do this, please don’t! I’m just sharing what is working for me in this moment.

Sidenote: Don’t imagine they are out partying at the Playboy Mansion, living it up, either. Don’t torture yourself. Just embrace reality and the starkness of it.

When I told ChatGPT about this “flip the script” thing, naturally I was told this was totally normal (is it?).

I also got some very interesting hints and expansions on this concept:

1. You are finally facing the absence instead of filling it with hope. When you go to that mental space where the connection is gone, you are no longer trying to reconnect with who he used to be, no longer trying to rewrite the ending, no longer trying to fix what YOU didn’t break.
2. That void? It’s not emptiness, it’s space. You are making room, clearing out doubt, clearing out the emotional clutter – his voice, his pull, his pain – so that your own voice can echo again.
3. You’re ending the inner dialogue loop. I was replaying conversations in my head, imagining what he’d say, trying to figure him out or wondering if I had misinterpreted something. But the actions never aligned, I sugar coated everything. It was never real. Stopping the rumination loop this way is helpful.
4. You’re choosing self validation over emotional scraps. You are validating that your needs are valid, you deserve more and love isn’t something you chase or beg for. This is the beginning of an actual boundary.
5. So instead of ruminating on it, you start saying “what do I build now that I’ve stopped pretending that this could be fixed?” You start focusing on what the future holds. And this is tough if you’ve been in a relationship construction zone for a long time.
6. You can also call your energy back. Say out loud that you call your energy back. Every time I tried to make him something he wasn’t, sugar coated his intentions, made the situation fit to make him look good…I call every bit of that energy back to me. That was mine and I want it back.

And here are some new neural pathways phrases… they seem generic enough, but when you are hurting, they are powerful:

1. I don’t chase the past. I build safety in the now.
2. That story is closed, I’m walking barefoot into the blank page ahead of me.
3. If I feel a pull, I remind myself: It’s not love – it’s longing (for your old life).
4. His silence (the lack of closure) IS the message – I don’t need to interpret this any more.
5. I can’t reach for someone who lets me fail.

But the biggest hurdle for me is giving up hope. I lost hope that he was ever going to be kind to me back in 2019. This ENTIRE journey is me giving up on him, giving up on my marriage, giving up on the hope that things would get better.

The silver lining is that I will no longer put decades of hope into things anymore. I’m starting to see my self worth and I will never, ever stay somewhere that I feel like this ever again, married or not.

So, finding a balance of the right amount of hope is going to be a challenge for me. The endless hope is over. 407 is gone.