How to Move on

   
It's difficult to understand that sometimes people make mistakes on such a magnitude that you question who they are. How could this person do this? How have they strayed so far from the person you once knew? 

There's no answer. It's difficult to understand that sometimes in life, there's just no closure. There are no answers to questions, no apologies, and no resolutions to problems. There are periods of transition you don't even know you're in. You've moved on to the next chapter without realizing you've turned the page. Twenty four hours goes by the same way it always does. All of a sudden a new day has come and you don't know how. 

Often times you don't even realize you've moved on, until one day you look back and realize that you are not the same person who was angry before. Sometimes we think of moving as a process that we begin but often times we move on without realizing we have done so. Maybe your boyfriend broke up with you. Maybe your parents did something wrong. Maybe you never got the apology you deserved from a friend. Maybe you're like me and all of the above applies.

One of the hardest lessons to understand is that you are not owed anything in life. We think we understand this but sometimes we think the exception is an apology, righting a wrong, or an admission of guilt because we've been told since we were kids "Say sorry if you mess up," "Acknowledge when you are wrong," etc. 

Another pill that's hard to swallow is that "saying sorry" doesn't always fix everything. You can get all the apologies you want in the world but it doesn't always change the way you feel. 

But one day, you will wake up, and without you ever really noticing it, you move on, on your own terms, in your own way, with no process or time frame. Maybe there are things that you feel like you'll never get over or never not be mad at. That's okay. You can still be mad about things that happened in the past, but when it doesn't effect your day to day life, when your passive aggressive attitude towards someone who wronged you no longer comes out, when it doesn't consume your thoughts anymore, you'll realize you've moved on. 

"We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered." - Tom Stoppard.