Dear Ex,

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across a quote that almost jumped off of my iPhone screen and slapped me in my face. The tweet read: “If you still talk about it, you still care about it. Stop giving life to dead things.” I stared at it for a while as I allowed the words to penetrate my psyche. It was truth staring dead at me on an illuminated LCD screen. A barrage of images and old conversations began to clutter my mind as I thought of all that had taken place since we called it quits. I quickly retweeted the quote adding my own “note to self.”

It has been almost two years since our breakup; our ugly, painful, unbelievable, long, drawn-out breakup. The one breakup that made me a living witness of the pain that Mary J. sang about in those old school ’90s jams. The breakup that I was sure belonged in a Tyler Perry film or a Terry McMillan novel. The breakup that belonged anywhere but in my life at this point.

Talking is what got me through that difficult period. Talking to family. Talking to friends. Words are what pulled me out of the defeated state that I found myself in, so I clung to them. I expressed my hurt and humiliation. I expressed my rage and dismay. I expressed what it did to my self-esteem. I expressed how I felt I was taken advantage of. I expressed how I was gradually getting over it. I expressed how I was making peace with the situation. I expressed how I was learning to forgive you and so on. Talking about it is what got me through, but even after I got back to my old self, I found that I was somehow still talking about it. I had become comfortable telling our story. I had it down pat. I had it perfected as if it were some ancient folklore that I wanted my future children to pass down to my grandchildren and so forth (not cool).

Although I’ve gotten over what happened, the fact that I still talk about it says somehow or another I haven’t fully released it. With that in mind, consider this letter the last hoorah. I will no longer relay the nitty-gritty details to those that inquire. I will no longer tell the story of how wrong you did me. I will no longer discuss the huge mess that you made. I will no longer call you a womanizer, make any other negative comments about you or throw any kind of dirt on your name. I refuse to give life to something that died so long ago. I refuse to provide  you with real estate in my head. I will leave the past in the past. I will let go of the things that no longer serve a purpose in my life, such as this negative experience. I’m done playing the victim.

I realize that each time you discuss things of the past, you somehow re-visit it and I for one am done re-visiting this soap opera. Living in the past hinders one from moving forward and I am one hundred percent ready to take advantage of my present and step into my future free from baggage, bitterness and resentment. I say all of that to say that I’m retiring our story for good.

Good luck and good riddance.

- Jaz

Jazmine Denise is a  freelance writer living in New York. Follow her on Twitter @jazminedenise

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock

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Relationships are taxing, but when you want to make the most of it, you give your all–mind, body and soul (heart). These three pieces comprise your whole and you offer them to your man lovingly. So when that love ends, it can leave those pieces of you lost and drowning in pain and sorrow. There are endless articles online focused on checking in and out of Heartbreak Hotel, but these next few tips focus on reclaiming your body and its strength, shedding vile and useless thoughts from your mind and restoring your heart with peace and love.

“This, to, Shall Pass.”

Take a page from an Oprah’s Book Club favorite, A New Earth, in which the author tells an ancient Sufi story of a king in distress from the never ending peaks of elation and depths of sorrow. On and on like a roller coaster, his life seemed to go.

The king summoned the help of a wise man, and was promptly told there weren’t enough riches in the world to pay for the kind of help he needed. So instead, the wise man offered his services as a gift, with the condition that the king swore to honor the solution. He put the treasure in an ornate jade box. Inside was a ring with the inscription, “This, too, will pass.” A reminder to the king that no matter how crappy things get–it is only ever a temporary state of being.

Think like the Queen that you are, and know that no rain lasts forever. When the pain of the breakup bubbles up in your bosom and tears are inevitable, you have license to close your eyes and recite the words, “this, to, shall pass.”

They give your mind free space, so that you can fill it with the knowledge necessary to move your heart forward, along your true path.

Your most powerful tool during a breakup is your head. Your heart is probably barely muttering some jibber jabber in between sobs. Or it’s saying some BS like “I’ll never be happy.” If you can, try to understand exactly what happened. Not so that you can get the person back, but so that you can avoid the same problem from happening again. And that is going to require a combination of you behaving differently, and you choosing someone who is just different from the last guy. Here’s how you’ll identify how to do that: