Was it hard, letting go of him?’ She asked me. I thought about it, my eyes focused on the coffee cup sat in front of me. ‘It is’, I eventually replied. ‘But it’s not because I miss him’. She raised an eyebrow at me. ‘Miss?’ ‘I don’t miss him. Because who he right now isn’t who I miss. Who he is right now is not the person that I fell in love with. But it was’, I pause and swallow, ‘is, hard letting him go because he was such a huge part of my life that summer. He ignited fires in the darkest parts of me, parts of me that I didn’t know existed; and when he left, he left a gaping, burnt hole in my heart. That’s why it hurts to let him go. It’s hard to let go of the person who once made you so happy that you didn’t want to fall asleep because you didn’t want to be without them, even for a minute. Letting go happens in stages, it’s not a sudden click of a switch where you go from not being able to imagine your life without them, to not attending their funeral if they died. It’s a funny thing, for me anyway, because I can go from laughing at how stupid I was for ever loving him one day; to crying on my bedroom floor, begging God that one day he would come back to me on another. I think that for everyone who has ever experienced heartbreak, then you know just how hard it is to even imagine not loving them. It takes a long time for someone to fade away, y'know? It’s hard to move on, and it’s even harder to accept that what you once had won’t ever happen again, things won’t ever be the same. It’s hard to accept that the person who you had once grown to love is now nothing but a stranger to you. When you lose someone, it’s never quite the same person who comes back. If they come back. You don’t talk to them anymore, but when you hear about them, or even see them in passing, your heart sinks a little bit and your chest tightens ever so slightly. But it gets better without you really realising. The person who once captivated your thoughts now rarely enters them. They’re not the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning. The feelings slowly disappear. But that’s not to say that you’ll never think about them again. There’ll be nights where you can’t sleep because your bones ache from missing them, and the ‘what-if’s’ haunt you until you feel like throwing up. But on a day to day basis, you know that you’re fine. Sort of.