The beauty of hindsight.

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"You can't spend the best year's of your life waiting for somebody to love you back".

This is a quote I discovered as I was browsing through Tumblr late last night and is one that really resonated with me. As I'm sure many of you will know by now, I entered the new year as a single lady, coming out of a relationship that I had been in since I was 14 and had lasted for 5 years and 4 months. The ex in question has been my only serious relationship, my only "proper" boyfriend and he became my best friend, my soul mate and my first love. Losing him was not only unexpected but also the hardest thing I've had to go through. 

Yet somehow, it's not as hard as I had expected and I felt a little strange about this...but when I found this quote it made me feel a whole lot better about what I had gone through, and still am going through. 

Whilst I wouldn't change the last five and a bit years at all, they definitely weren't perfect. It's only now I'm free from the relationship that I look back and see that at some points, I definitely did deserve better. I dedicated my whole life to one person, building a routine around them, putting them first, giving things up for them, literally acting like a puppet whilst they pulled the strings. I gave my all to somebody who was only giving me half- and it's only now that I can see that. I was constantly waiting to be loved back the way that I was loving him. And it was constantly causing me to be hurt.

It hurts me to think about. Of course it does. It hurt to walk away from someone I considered to be my everything whilst I still felt that I was in love with them and now, every day, it still hurts. But I feel regret too, for myself, and I hurt thinking about the pain I constantly put myself through, forgiving my ex for countless 'mistakes', listening to pathetic excuses and lies, going through heartbreak after heartbreak and still forgiving him. 

I literally want to punch myself in the face. But I also want to travel in a Dr Who style tardis to 15, 16, 17 year old Flo, scoop her into my arms and tell her that she deserves more. 

Hindsight is a beautiful thing but also a curse, and right now it's playing with me quite a lot! As I said, I wouldn't change the last five years at all- they were amazing. But I can't believe how blind love made me and that I spent all but one of my teenage years feeling so unhappy such a lot of the time. They say your teenage years are the best years of your life and I feel almost like mine have been taken from me, ruined and thrown away. 

But as I get older, I'm finding the years are only getting better for me. I'm achieving more, doing more, learning more and gaining amazing experiences. I'm meeting new people and making new friends- so now I ask myself this; what if actually, there aren't any best years of your life? What if it's all just amazing, as long as you shape it that way?

I don't know whether teenage years are the best year of your life or not- and I'm sure I won't be able to make that judgement until I'm old and grey, reminiscing on my life. However, I know that as I begin the journey into my twenties- a time I regularly see called "the selfish years"- that I am definitely going to put myself first. Always. I will no longer pander to people, trying to force affection out of people who won't give it to me, forcing relationships to happen that won't. I will really take advantage of my "selfish years" and enjoy them- for myself, and maybe by myself too. Who knows? It doesn't matter. All that matters is that I'm happy and that I'm surrounded by people I love- this is something I've really learnt over the last few weeks. I regret the fact that it took me so long to realise this, and realise that you can't depend on one person to make you happy. But hey, it's all a learning curve, right? 

This post makes everything sound worse than it was. It really wasn't all bad, I promise. At the time I felt happy- well and truly happy. I was totally besotted and totally in love, I had planned a future with this person, planned our wedding and even our children's names! I never wanted our time together to end. It's only now that I've moved on that I can see that I wasn't actually as happy as I should have been and that I definitely wasn't receiving the kind of love I should have been. Right now, I'm feeling a complicated mix of emotions, but every day has only gotten easier for me, and I know now that the only way is up. It will be a struggle and I know there will be bad days that come along with the good, but that's just life isn't it? For now though, I feel like Augustus Waters, because "I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend".

Love from,
Florence Grace

Like this? Why not try... Stages of a break up | Dating to marry? | How to get through a break up



Comments

  1. Chichi26 January 2016 at 04:02

    Hindsight makes me think a lot, and I think in some ways it's bittersweet. I'm 23 and I'm always looking back on my childhood, teenage years and university years, and I always think "I should have been treated better/I should have made better decisions/I should have handled that different." I have so many regrets and I feel bad about stuff - I've been through a lot - but now I see that hindsight is a learning lesson for me, and I realise that I can't keep on beating myself up about the past!

    Chichi
    http://chichi-writes.blogspot.co.uk/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Chichi26 January 2016 at 04:10

    Also, I know the feeling: I've never been in love or in a relationship but I've had to learn - the hard way - that I can't expect others to love me back, be on friendly terms with or treat me with kindness. All my life I've been treated so poorly. I always believed that if you are nice to others then they will be nice back - it should be a two-way street - but through my experiences I've realised that that's not always the case.

    I can be loving and kind, but I can't control someone's response and reactions to that. However, I can control how I deal with someone's response to that. Nowadays if I'm kind/loving/friendly/respectful towards someone and they don't do the same for me, then I cut them off and don't bother with them anymore. There's no point in trying with someone if that person won't make the same effort with me.

    Chichi
    http://chichi-writes.blogspot.co.uk/

    ReplyDelete

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