It’s coming up on almost two years when I ended one of the most pivotal relationships of my life. And like a true Aquarius, when I am done, I am done.

I had a lot of people (including him) tell me that we would end up together because I felt sympathy for him and genuinely wanted him to do better when I broke up with him. But the thing about me is that once I see that a relationship is headed down a road that I don’t want to go down, I will discontinue it.

And, so I did. Although he reaches out sometime and still professes his love for me (from time-to-time), I can see the difference between wishing someone that I used to be in a relationship well and moving on from it.

Although I have dated here and there, I mostly took the time to heal and I can say that I am grateful I did because I have healed from it and am ready for something new with someone else.

Here are 3 ways that I healed:

1. I saw it as a teaching lesson.

I believe that everything is either a blessing or a lesson and relationships fall into these categories, too. Sometimes a relationship is in it’s blessing-phase and sometimes it’s in its lesson-phase. It all comes together to help us grow through gratitude or by learning something.

It took a long time to not feel guilty about leaving him because of what we shared. Especially because our relationship dynamic was made up of trying to make me feel like the one who did everything wrong in the relationship. That’s what emotionally abusive people do, they have difficulty assuming responsibility for what they have done.

Among other lessons, I learned that I can only take enough responsibility for what went wrong. I have owned what I did and whether or not he will is not up to me, I have forgiven myself and him. There is no better feeling than seeing what something came to teach me and being at peace about how something has turned out.

2. I forgave.

I heard a song that he wrote for me that used to make me angry and, this time I started singing and smiling to it. I surprised myself. They say time heals but I disagree with this because it depends what you do in that time. I took the time to heal and progress with my life, I can listen to songs written about me and be grateful- even the ones that portrayed me in a negative light.

I am grateful that I can turn on Spotify and have a piece of memory written and produced for me by someone who I once shared a part of my life with. Through forgiveness, I can see the past as a blessing and not a curse.

3. I took a look at my life.

I have mentioned previously how dating someone in the spotlight showed me people around me’s true colors. I discovered fake friends, I had to be at peace with publicly hearing horrible things about the person I was dating had did (or not done) and, I had to be okay with wondering when he was on the other side of The World and if he was still being faithful to me.

This relationship mostly brought out an ugly and insecure side of me that I needed to heal. Prior to dating him, I thought that I had done enough healing to be in a healthy union with someone and then he came along. I could’ve made up excuses and blamed him for relentlessly pursuing him because a part of me chose to be with him- regardless of the red flags.

I had to be honest with myself and ask myself what was appealing about dating someone who had a lot of work to do on themselves and one of the truths that was revealed to me is that I had a tendency to like to date charity cases and people who I felt like I could help because I was afraid of accepting and receiving unconditional love.

This highlighted a lot of my childhood, how my parents relationship was and, the belief systems that were instilled in me to keep secrets and suffer in silence.

I may not have gotten married or had children with him (and a part of me is grateful for that) but, I was led down a road of internal healing that is irreplaceable.