How To Get Used To Living Without Her

Eventually, you get used it it.

That’s what happens though, you don’t really get over it. It just becomes something that is part of you. You eventually just get used to it. All the failed efforts, the lonely nights, and the blaring silence. You eventually just get used to it. The process is slow and gradual. Getting over it sometimes feels like a decaying carbon isotope. Each stage of decay representing another set of days where it should have been her but it wasn’t. Each stage of decay representing a memory that no longer comes to mind.

Slowly but surely you’ll go most of the day without thinking about her. You’ll go most of the day without thinking about the way she used to drape her arms around you in that back corner of the library. Getting used to it is comparable to a moment in time so serene like the calm after a hurricane. The chaos is clearly visible. The shingles and ceilings tiles scattered everywhere. The beams and rods bent and broken, the bricks collapsed and the windows shattered. Yet the sun hits it in such a way that makes it beautiful to look at.

With each passing day you begin to forget why you ever holding on in the first place. And I bet it troubled you, the thought of letting go. I don’t blame you; letting go means a lot of things. Letting go means that you’ll have to forget, not necessarily the memory, but the way that memory made you feel. You’ll have to forget about how it felt to kiss her, or how it felt to have your heart rate speed up as her hips came closer to yours. You will have to forget about the magic of the moment, and how at that time everything just felt so right.

Remember that memory is only memory.

I used to tell myself I would never forget, that I would always remember the things we did together, but that was just me being defiant.

It’s biology, it’s how the brain works. As time passes the memory generalizes. It goes from being able to remember every little detail, like the way her lips would pucker when she spoke or the shade of red her cheeks would turn after my touch. Then you start to forget about each other’s schedules, and how it felt to be friends. You get used to not seeing her name appear on your phone screen. Before you know it, you realize that it’s her you haven’t heard from in days.

It becomes easier to sleep at night. You get used to waking up at three in the morning with no text messages. You get used to seeing her out and about with your other friends via Snapchat. It no longer becomes a battle to wake up thinking about what you were desperately trying to forget the night before. All the apathy and indifference you once displayed towards anything that didn’t have to do with her eventually goes away.

It no longer sickens you to think about her loving someone else, only because you’ve gotten used to that thought. Driving down the expressway at 80 miles per hour doesn’t seem so passive anymore. You begin to focus less on the lyrics but more on the melodies. The same sun that you’ve been waking up to your whole entire life suddenly seems a little brighter. You smell the coffee, and realize that life goes on. No longer will you have to endure the toxic wonder of what she’s up to, or who she could be talking to.

In a way this is just simple economics. It would make sense for you to keep trying to go for her. Only if the marginal benefit (holding her hand, taking her out to dinner etc.) was greater than the marginal cost (getting ignored, expending unnecessary energy). Even if the marginal cost is greater than the marginal benefit, you can only try for so long. Your fire will fade away, the intensity will begin to dull. The addictive one-sidedness, the day dreams, the way she made you feel, you will get used to it.

Someone else will come into your life even though it may not seem like it right now. You have to act on this moment however. Once you feel yourself getting used to it, that’s when you know it’s time. Better yourself, go out with your boys, and go play sports, let your walls down again, meet other women, and go study for the LSAT. You’ve wasted far too much time thinking about a girl who is probably texting another guy. You have law school to attend and an exciting life to live.