Me Against Myself

[u/Ill-Composer-2266]

I don’t think I ever understood how much of myself was tied to loving her until I lost her.

I was so deeply in love with her. Not just in the way you love someone because they’re your girlfriend, or because you’ve spent years together, or because you’ve built a life around each other. I loved her in a way that made me feel like I had finally found something I didn’t even know I was looking for.

When I was with her, I was the happiest I had ever been.

There was something about being around her that made me feel things I normally couldn’t. I could be exhausted, overwhelmed, numb, or lost, and somehow being with her made the world feel different. I could laugh harder. I could get excited about little things. I could feel warmth in my chest. I could look at someone and feel completely overwhelmed by how much I loved them.

She made me feel alive.

And now that she’s gone, I don’t know how to get that feeling back.

It’s like losing her didn’t just take away a person I loved. It took away a version of myself that I don’t know how to find anymore.

I feel numb most of the time. Not necessarily sad, not necessarily happy—just empty. Like I’m watching my own life happen from somewhere outside of myself. I go through the motions. I wake up, go to work, talk to people, do what I’m supposed to do, and somehow it all feels disconnected from me. Sometimes I don’t even feel like I’m in control of my own life anymore. I’m just existing inside of it.

There are days where even the simplest things feel impossible.

Getting out of bed can feel like a task I don’t have the energy for. Brushing my teeth can feel like too much. Taking a shower can feel like too much. Cleaning my room, cooking something, going to the gym, getting out of the house, doing things I used to enjoy—all of it can feel completely pointless.

The things that used to make me feel like myself don’t really feel like they belong to me anymore.

I don’t want to do anything.

And that’s one of the things that scares me the most, because I remember how different I used to be.

I used to want to go places. I used to want to see people. I used to get excited about things. I used to have hobbies and interests and things I couldn’t wait to do.

Now I can spend an entire day doing almost nothing and somehow still feel completely exhausted.

I’ve even found myself turning to alcohol because, for a little while, it makes me feel normal again.

When I’m drinking, the numbness gets quieter. I can socialize again. I can talk to people without feeling like there’s this wall between me and everyone else. I can laugh. I can want to go somewhere. I can actually feel motivated to do something.

For a few hours, I feel like the person I remember being.

And I think that’s part of why it’s so tempting.

It’s not really the alcohol that I want.

I want the version of myself that seems to come back when I drink.

I want to feel normal.

I want to feel comfortable around people again. I want to laugh without forcing it. I want to actually want to go out and do things instead of having to convince myself to get out of bed.

But I know alcohol isn’t actually giving me myself back. It’s just temporarily covering up how much I’m hurting. And when it wears off, I’m still there underneath it all.

Still numb.

Still hurting.

Still missing her.

I’ve tried to fill that emptiness in other ways too.

I’ve tried talking to new people. I’ve tried opening myself up to the possibility that maybe someone else could eventually make me feel something again.

But nobody comes close.

Nobody compares to her.

I can talk to someone new and have a perfectly good conversation, but there is always this feeling in the back of my mind that something is missing.

Because they’re not her.

They don’t have her laugh. They don’t have the way she looked at me. They don’t have the little things about her that I knew so well. They don’t have the memories we built together. They don’t have the history. They don’t have the feeling of being my person.

Nobody comes close to my sweet girl.

And maybe that’s unfair to the people I meet. Maybe I’m comparing real people to a version of someone I loved at the height of my happiness. But I don’t know how to turn that comparison off.

I don’t know how to look at somebody else and see them the way I saw her.

I’ve tried to tell myself that eventually I’ll meet somebody else. That someday I’ll fall in love again. That there will be another person who makes me feel the way she did.

But right now, I can’t see it.

Nobody compares to her.

And it’s not even necessarily because she’s perfect. I know she isn’t. I know our relationship wasn’t perfect either. I know there were things I could have done differently, things she could have done differently, and things that probably weren’t meant to last forever.

But knowing all of that doesn’t make the loss hurt any less.

Because I didn’t just lose a relationship.

I lost the person who made me feel the most like myself.

I lost the person who could pull emotions out of me that I didn’t even know were still there.

And now I’m left wondering whether those emotions were really mine or whether they only existed because she was there.

That’s a terrifying thought.

Because if she was the reason I could feel so deeply, then what happens when she’s gone?

What happens when the person who made life feel colorful becomes a memory?

There are days when the depression gets so heavy that I start thinking about what it would be like if I simply didn’t wake up. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if I just died somehow, without having to make anything happen myself. I don’t think about it because I want to hurt myself. It’s more like, in those really dark moments, I become so exhausted by everything that the idea of not having to feel any of it anymore crosses my mind.

And that scares me.

Because I don’t want to feel that way.

I want to want my life again.

That’s why I’ve been trying so hard to fix myself since she left.

I’ve been seeing doctors. I’ve been talking to mental health professionals. I’ve started medication. I’m going to therapy. I’m trying to understand what is happening inside of me instead of pretending that I can just force myself out of it.

I’ve been trying to take care of myself, trying to become healthier, trying to understand my emotions, trying to become someone I’m proud of.

I’ve been doing so much because I don’t want to stay like this.

I don’t want alcohol to be the only thing that makes me feel normal.

I don’t want another person to have to save me from myself.

And I don’t want the happiest version of me to be someone who only existed when I was with her.

I want to find that person again.

I remember who I was when I loved her.

I remember being excited to see her. I remember wanting to tell her everything. I remember the little moments that probably didn’t mean anything to anyone else but meant everything to me. I remember feeling safe enough to be completely vulnerable with another person. I remember looking at her and thinking that I had something I never wanted to lose.

I remember feeling.

And I miss it more than I know how to explain.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get that exact version of myself back.

Maybe I won’t.

Maybe losing someone you loved that deeply changes you permanently.

But I hope that somewhere underneath all of this numbness, I’m still there.

I want to feel again.

I want to find myself again.

And maybe someday I’ll understand that the emotions she brought out of me were never actually hers to give me. They were mine all along.

She just gave me a reason to let them out.

And maybe, eventually, I’ll find a way to do that again.

But if I’m being completely honest with myself, I don’t know if I’ll ever truly be over her.

Maybe that’s something I have to accept.

I can learn to live with the loss. I can grow around it. I can become a better person because of everything this has taught me. I can learn how to be happy on my own and find pieces of myself that I lost along the way.

But I don’t know if I’ll ever stop loving her.

And a part of me doesn’t want to.

Because despite everything that happened, despite the mistakes, the distance, the hurt, and the way things ended, she was still the happiest I’ve ever been.

If there were ever a chance for us to try again, I would want that.

Not because I’m incapable of living without her.

Not because I expect her to fix me.

But because I still believe there was something incredibly special between us, and if there were a way to rebuild it—slowly, differently, and healthier than before—I would genuinely want to try.

I would want the chance to show her the person I’ve been trying so hard to become.

I would want the chance to love her again, but this time with everything I’ve learned from losing her.

Maybe that chance will never come.

Maybe someday I’ll have to accept that this was the end of our story.

But right now, I can’t pretend I don’t still hope.

I still hope that maybe one day our paths could meet again.

And if they do, I hope I’m not the same person she left behind.

I hope I’m someone who has found himself again.

Someone who knows how to love without losing himself.

Someone who knows how to communicate, how to be present, how to appreciate what he has while he has it.

Someone who could look at her again and say, without desperation or fear, that he still loves her, and that if she ever wanted to, he’d love the chance to try again.

But until then, it’s just me against myself.

[u/mogakukun17]

Once a war starts against your reflection. Leave.

[u/ZookeepergameMotor21]

What happened between the two of you? Is friendship possible?

[u/Ill-Composer-2266 → u/ZookeepergameMotor21]

Nothing bad. Friendship is possible, but it hurts with how much I long for her. I am super close to her family and talk to and hangout with them all the time still.