break up – Rosie Culture

Do What You Have To After A Break Up

How do I know when a girl just went through a break up? She starts posting selfies, deep quotes and poetry, and sharing Thought Catalog articles about how being alone is better (at least share my blog posts guys, come on). And then all of her relationship pictures start to fade from her social media. Her profile picture changes to a solo pic or a photo of a girl’s night out. And the status quietly changes to single.

It’s all a little cliche. That whole dying your hair a wacky color after a break up to try to change your identity. People talk about it all the time and poke fun at the girls having their poetry induced break through. They talk about how much she’s changed and how funny it is that she never used to act that way.

Well, they change because break ups change you. They force you to look at yourself as a lone person and understand who you truly are. Maybe you are a blonde at heart, a party girl, or an independent being.

Who cares what anyone else thinks? As if they’ve never had a life shattering break up, as if they’ve never hit their single and ready to mingle phase.

We’re all guilty of it, and even if we weren’t, girl, DO YOU! Do what you have to to find yourself, to feel better and move on. If you have to make out with a lot of people, do it. If you have to talk crap on your ex, do it. If it makes you feel better I did it on a blog for all of the world to see, you can just do it in a group chat. Or start a blog. Why not?

If you have to share poetry about fueling your fucking fire, shout out Christopher Poindexter, then DO it. No one can tell you how to heal. Don’t ever feel silly about the things you are doing to better yourself and move on. I’m rooting for you and every girl who has had their life changed by a break up is rooting for you.

Photo by: https://www.flickr.com/photos/samuelyoo/

Break Ups

Accepting Break Up Blame

I don’t like my exes, not a single one of them. My relationships/spurts of dating/long-time hook ups ended poorly often. I might’ve not liked them even before we broke up. Sometimes I stopped liking them during the break up process. Other times, we were friendly for a while, but I ultimately stopped liking them. Mostly due to resentment over any mistrust, being cheated on, or just seeing them be happy when they didn’t let me be happy or caused me to be unhappy for a while.

You may think that because I don’t like them, it probably means they did something wrong. And that’s true, but the bad blood doesn’t fall all on them. As much as I’d like to sit here and play victim, I wasn’t always innocent.

I didn’t cheat, I didn’t intentionally try to hurt people, but I did let things go on longer than they should’ve. I did put a lot of time into things I knew weren’t going to work, did act one way and say the opposite.

I accept some of the break up blame. In most cases, I did the breaking up because I either recognized my faults in the relationship or the guy I was dating at the time did something to screw everything up.

I’ve written a lot about my exes, I’ve written a lot about how much I resent them and how far I’ve come since them. But I’ve shrugged off a lot of the blame until now. I might’ve not been the problem that caused us to break up, but I was part of the problem. All I can do now is move on and grow from it and wish them all the best of luck.

photo by: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hernanpc/

Break Ups

How Hopeless I Felt When I Was Single

I’m not sure why being single seems like it’s the end of the world. I guess no matter how hard I looked at it, no one looked as happy when they were single as they did when they were in a relationship.

There was a good chunk of time for me when being single was like torture. There was also a time where I held onto it real tight, avoiding every relationship possible.

But I never really stopped feeling hopeless. When I was happy being single, I still got lonely. My friends all were in relationships and when they were off doing their boyfriend/girlfriend thing, I was alone. It taught me to be by myself, but it made me think I would always be by myself. When I started to become comfortable alone and do well by myself, I felt even more hopeless that I would never find what my friends had. That I would never find what I was reading about in books or binge watching on Netflix.

And when I was sad being single, I was more than hopeless. I felt that I was hard to love. There had been a time where I had given the boy I loved everything. But then I felt like I had nothing left to give.

It’s normal to feel hopeless when you’re single, whether you’re happy or sad. But even when you give up on yourself, the person that’s right for you won’t be giving up at all. It takes time, patience, and a lot of learning. But you’re not hopeless.

Photo by: https://www.flickr.com/photos/james_sickmind/

Relationships

How We Met (Part 3)

A response to my very old series of endings called I’m Glad It Didn’t Work Out, view it here. This will be a series focused on the beginnings of various relationships, view part 1 and part 2.

The first time I saw you we were at a party and I gushed over your cool tattoos. I tried all sorts of hard to get your attention, but you went on your way.

I swear I didn’t see you again until 6 months later, I was kind of convinced you were some sort of mythical creature I had made up in my head. You had just disappeared. But there you were, in front of me once again, cool tattoos and all. And I didn’t know what to do.

It made no sense to gush again. But I was just so shy – I’ve always been a weird kind of shy – and couldn’t work up any nerve to talk to you.

So I resorted to elementary school behavior and told my friend, who was also your friend, that I thought you were cute. He relayed the message and you found your way to me. I was still too shy. We awkwardly stood in a corner trying to chat. I was wearing a Spiderman t-shirt and I’m pretty sure we tried talking about it for 15 minutes straight.

We met at a party and then again at another party. I convinced myself you were this perfect, tattooed god. But when we were talking in that corner, awkward and shy on my part, is when I should’ve realized we had absolutely nothing in common and that’s absolutely bad news in the long run.

photo by: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vhines200/

Relationships

Figuring Out Your Feelings

Do you ever get into a period of time where you’re at your highest of highs or lowest of lows? And that period of time lasts weeks or months or maybe even years. So when a different emotion comes up you’re not even really sure what it is.

That’s kind of what it’s like after you haven’t been in love for a while. You don’t know what it felt like or what it’s supposed to feel like. You’re not even sure what it’s like to be happy with someone else. You’re emotionally stupid and it’s extremely frustrating.

I feel like I momentarily shut off my emotions for like 3 years and that it may have caused a little bit of damage to how receptive I am to my emotions. I recognize sad, I recognize happy – but I don’t always understand where they are coming from. Why I’m sad or why I’m happy.

It turns into an extremely frustrating situation where I think things to death. I cause problems that are unnecessary and I feel helpless. All because I can’t read my own emotions.

A lot of us broken people put off feeling certain ways because it just feels better to feel nothing. It hurts less when you don’t care, when you don’t get emotionally attached.

But it’s hard to find and figure out those feelings again. All you know is what you knew before and that wasn’t necessarily the right situation for you. All I know is my last relationship, one that was extremely toxic and left me in such a lost state. Every feeling I feel now goes back to those feelings.

All in all, I never learned how to feel. I had these messed up emotions that I tucked away and when I took them back out I realized I’d never known how to use them in the first place.

Being emotionally stupid is hard because in most cases, you are the only one who knows what you’re feeling. And when you can’t explain those feelings it can become disastrous.

photo by: https://www.flickr.com/photos/face_it/

Break Ups

A Thank You To The Guys Who Didn’t Treat Me Right

Sometimes, the people who screw you over in life are just as important as the people who have been there for you every step of the way. Everything and everyone we come across can be taken as a lesson, no matter how much it hurt or how much you regret it or how much you wish it would go away. What happened was important to who you are today, and one day that lesson will come in handy to your happiness.

So thank you to the guy who told me I mattered to him when I didn’t.

Even though I forgave you long ago, you taught me how to take two steps back. I learned how to be a little bit more on the defense, that not everyone says what they mean like I do. The next time someone told me I mattered to them, I knew whether or not to believe them.

And thank you to the guy who made me put my whole life in his hands, then quickly took it away without looking back.

Because of you, I grew stronger. And though I look at our relationship as the greatest mistake of my life, I now know who to put my trust in. I now know I can come back from things that ruin me. I can recognize when someone will actually take care of me, not drop me like a weight like you did.

Thank you to the guy who I let treat me the worst.

I know my boundaries now, I have self respect. I’ll never respect you, but I’ve learned what I deserve and I can compare how wonderfully I am treated now to how disgustingly you treated me then. It makes me appreciate what I have.

Thank you to the guy who cheated on me.

I never ignore my gut instincts anymore and I know I don’t deserve to come in second to anyone. I’ve learned to roll things off my shoulders and move on.

Thank you to every guy that emotionally abused me, that made me think I was worthless or that I couldn’t do this or that. Thank you for the lessons I learned from the guys who didn’t treat me right. It makes the good guys in the world seem that much greater in my eyes, I appreciate it so much more. I could never take it for granted, like you did.

photo by: https://www.flickr.com/photos/baileysjunk/

Relationships

Everyone Settles In Some Way

There are different ways that you can settle. You can settle for a job that you might love. You can settle for an apartment that you just feel “eh” about. You can settle for a relationship.

Ever since my last relationship, I’ve been terrified of settling. Mostly because I saw a lot of people graduate with me who just clung on to the first girl/guy they saw and made it into a relationship. It was a good time to settle down, so they just stayed content with whoever they were with at the time.

I’m not sure that there’s anything wrong with that. You could easily settle for someone and live a happy life. Because I think eventually, everyone technically settles.

You could fall in love with anyone if you really tried. In most cases, you could make any relationship work if both parties are willing to put in the work. You don’t have to be in fireworks, fairytale love to have a decent marriage and future life.

For the people who have never thought about it as settling, it’s easy to fall in a pattern and get comfortable with someone and spend your life with them.

For the people who are painfully aware of what settling is, they question everything. What if I find a better job? What if a better apartment opens up next week? What if I’m just making this person work for me because they’re here and I’m ready?

Are relationships just based off timing? Do we all settle in some way because were ready to fall in love and someone is there to fall in love with? I really think that all of that is true, that there is more than one soul mate for you on this earth, that you could truly make anyone your soul mate if you both tried hard enough. If you are both willing to settle.

photo by: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikahiironniemi/