ex – Rosie Culture

I Still Think About My Exes

I haven’t had contact with any of my exes in almost two years. Luckily, I don’t think any of them care about my blog anymore because I know they’d just be tickled to know I still think about them sometimes.

Of course I do, how could I forget? I still think of the time I got way too drunk at a casual get together in college and the time my middle school “boyfriend” broke up with me through his AIM profile. I think about everything, including my exes.

It’s just here and there, I don’t really follow any of them on social media so that made it easy to escape them. But sometimes a photo comes up in my Timehop, or I tell a funny story that included them to my friends, or I drive by a place that reminds me of them.

And I think about the good times we had a lot. It used to be only bad things, sometimes it still is. Sometimes I still cringe when I think of how many times I drunk called my most serious ex or how I completely shattered the trust of another. But I try not to cling to those things anymore and choose to remember better times. Sometimes I think about how I made the first move and asked him to our sorority date party, how I used to draw all over one boy’s arms in high school during class, how another one used to piggy back me from the driveway to my front door.

But all of those thoughts are very fleeting, that’s the key here. It is of course okay to think about your exes, they were a huge part of your life. I dated one of my boyfriends from age 16-20, that is a very defining chunk of my existence, without him it would’ve been and with him it still was.

If you think about them more than just some fleeting moments, though, you may not be ready to move on. You may not be ready to build another life separate of that heartbreak. And that’s okay too. We can’t just bury our emotions and expect them not to rise from the grave like zombies eventually. We have to accept the things that made us who we are, whether we like them or not.

woman and man sitting on brown wooden bench — Photo by Vera Arsic on Pexels.com

Break Ups

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/

Relationships

My New Relationship Feels Familiar

My current boyfriend reminds me of my ex boyfriend. There are a lot of similarities between the two relationships that my head almost spins sometimes because it seems so familiar.

And I was kind of worried about that because my old relationship ended in an all out war of who could make the other person feel worse. My old relationship was emotionally scarring and unstable. My old relationship left me broken and scared. My old relationship sucked.

I was sitting here thinking about how I would like a lizard as a pet, maybe my boyfriend and I could buy one together. But it feels a little weird to me because I used to have a lizard as a pet, my ex and I bought one together.

Coincidentally, both guys like lizards.

But it’s not a coincidence to like someone who has things in common with me. I felt all of these similarities between this relationship and an old one, but really the similarities just have to do with me. I’ve found someone like my ex because I’ve found someone who I have a lot in common with.

And just because they both liked sports, tattoos, lizards, and some other silly things, doesn’t mean that the relationship is the same. This relationship is safe, trusting, open, honest, and loving. My old relationship was full of distrust, anger, and emotional abuse.

Duh, I have a type. And this looming feeling of similarities doesn’t have to be looming at all. It’s actually really cool that I found someone that I have stuff in common with that I can have a healthy relationship with. I didn’t date my ex for four years for no reason, it was because we had similar interests and therefore we had fun together.

My new relationship kind of reminds me of an old relationship, but better.

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

PostGrad

That Was So Long Ago

Are you one of those people that sometimes stays up until 2 AM and thinks about that really embarrassing time that you jumped off the swings in preschool and everyone saw your teddy bear underwear?

I am and that’s a true story.

I think about the sad, bad, embarrassing moments a lot of the time and work myself into an anxiety about it. I’ll stay awake until the sun rises over something that happened years ago.

And I wonder why I’m even thinking about it or why it still matters, but I am and it does. Even though I can’t do anything about it now.

I can’t do anything about it now. That’s what I tell myself every night when I’m thinking too much or on my drive home from work when I had a bad day. It’s time to start over, it’s time to wipe the slate, its time to forget about it and try harder tomorrow.

Sometimes I get anxiety when ex boyfriends try to contact me. Because every single relationship ended badly and every single guy reminds me of that. But why does it matter? Why do I care? It was so long ago. I can’t do anything about it now.

And that’s my mantra to my anxiety. It was so long ago. I can’t do anything about it now. It doesn’t always work, but I’m learning not to sweat the little things or the little people.

It was so long ago that I dated that frat boy and made a fool out of myself. It was so long ago that I shut out my family in high school. It was so long ago that I slipped and fell in the middle of the student center during the lunch rush. It was so long ago, I can’t do anything about it now. I can only try to grow and be better.

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

PostGrad

I’ll Always Be Who I Was At 16

I have often tried to forget about fragments of time in my life. I blurred out most of high school, can barely remember middle school, because I just wanted to move on. I wanted to shed my skin and start all over. I wanted to do it better this time.

When I went to college, I tried to find myself. I explored and went out of my comfort zone. I wanted to be the best version of myself, I wanted to know what I was capable of.

During that exploration, I kind of lost myself. It was the opposite of what I wanted to do, but maybe it was what I needed. A wake up call came when I graduated college and had to figure out who I was outside of the sorority, laid back, college life.

That’s when I realized I’ll always be who I was at 16. I can’t just shed skin after skin after skin and expect to start over. I can’t completely forget middle school, high school, and college and try to become a new person again.

I didn’t need to find myself, I already knew who I was. I just needed to build upon it. Every experience, every version of yourself is just a brick to the building. It makes up who you are. So even though I’m not 16 years old, that high school brick still takes up a part of me. I still rock out at concerts and write in a journal and get really shy sometimes.

And even though college is over, that buckwild 21 year old brick still makes up who I am. I can still go out and have fun, nap all day, and get a little dramatic.

It’s time to stop denying the past, because your past makes you who you are. Every ex-boyfriend, every girl fight, every failing grade, and dumb mistake was a lesson. You are learning and becoming the best version of yourself every day, brick by brick. I’ll always be who I was at 16 and I’m starting to love that.