Pain of Break up
Tons have been written about the feeling of being discarded after a breakup—like you’re a piece of crap. It is all true and then some. The pain is incredible. It can feel like all the effort, hopes, and dreams you invested in the relationship have been negated. Especially when you are the one left behind. The pain and trauma are immense. You start to replay every moment—good, bad, and ugly—over and over, but it doesn’t help. In fact, it makes it feel like you’re making no progress at all. It keeps you stuck.
The pit in your stomach is real. Memories flood back with every familiar sight, sound, or scent—a song, a place, even a type of food. It stings even more when you’ve been replaced. Accepting that you weren’t “the one” for someone, especially after a long-term relationship or when you share children, is painful. Guilt and shame weigh heavily, and the sense of failure feels unbearable.
It’s a pain that sometimes feels worse than death because, with death, at least fate is the culprit. But in a breakup, you’re left with the feeling of rejection and abandonment. You blame yourself, and you’re haunted by the thought that somehow you weren’t enough.
You may waste time trying to fix things, trying to be the version of yourself that they loved, but sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s a heavy burden, and it can feel like you’re drowning in emotional failure.
The confusion
The hardest part is when there were good times—memories of the good, mixed with confusion. You start to twist yourself into a pretzel, trying to understand what went wrong. The narrative is different for both sides, and it’s easy to lose track of yourself.
What can you do ?
What helps, though, is to reconnect with who you were before the relationship. The dreams, the aspirations, and the habits that defined you before you were caught up in someone else’s story. Yes, some of your dreams may have crashed, but who is the new version of you that you can create now? How can you handle feeling irrelevant and discarded?
What people forget is that the good habits you once had can help you find your way back to yourself. You don’t have to keep beating yourself up or holding onto the guilt and shame. For me, the journey back to joy was about rediscovering the things that brought me joy before the relationship—those passions that made me feel whole.
How did I handle it ? How did I reclaim me?
For me, it was about discipline and my dabbling with prayer practices from a young age , dance, working with my hands creating crafts , stories, and the ability to see life with a sense of wonder. So, step by step, I started to grow a garden, create crafts, read inspiring stories—no matter how cliché they seemed. I focused on the love of people who cared about me and kept the rhythms and routines for myself and my children. I focused on my fitness and financial health—all of these things that had nothing directly to do with healing the emotional pain, but they did bring me joy from other corners of my life.
You can’t remove the darkness; you have to bring in the light.
None of these joyful pieces were tied to the relationship. They were tied to who I am—what made me happy. And little by little, I started to put myself back together. And one day, I looked at myself and realized I was a version of me that was stronger, healing, and surprised by how much I had grown.
That’s why picking joy, focusing on the good, moving your body, and focusing on yourself—on your own well-being—works. It takes time, but the returns are guaranteed.
