Healing is weird.

If I could give my younger self advice, it would probably go something like this: Don't have a preconceived notion of what you think your life will look like in a year, five years, or 10 years.

It will not turn out like you wanted. 

If you let go of what you want to happen, other things will happen. 

Good things. Good things will happen.

—

I think one of my favorite memories, ever, is going to be the first morning I woke up in DC. 

I put my music on and walked around for a while.

I sat down on park benches and people watched. For about three hours, I just wandered around aimlessly, oftentimes stopping to sit, and I just looked around at all of this beauty that I’ve never seen before.

I showed people my photos of Christmas trees in DC today.

How can you even explain that in words?

The one in the Library of Congress is the photo that I keep going back to. (The one pictured above).

Are you kidding me?

I wouldn’t consider myself well traveled, especially considering the fact that I now live in a military town with people who have lived all over the world, but I do travel more than your average person.

I’ve never seen anything like what I saw in DC, in a good way. 

Are you kidding me?

This middle of nowhere Kansas girl is impresssed. 

The word beauty does not begin to describe it.

—

I’m going to put all of my rambles in this post. I would apologize for that, but I’m not sorry about it.

This is where my mind is at the moment, and we’re just going to go with it.

—

I’ve known for a while now that I need to move on.

I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s a feeling that I have in my soul that what was in my life before is not enough for my anymore. (Moving earlier this year helped with that.)

I just think there’s something, somewhere, out there for me. 

On Sunday in DC, I sat outside a Smithsonian museum on a park bench for about an hour.

I people watched, mostly, and I thought a lot about doing something that’s been long overdue.

Finally, I gave myself a deadline. This thing that I need to do will be done by noon. I ended up being 15 minutes late, but whatever. 

I took my phone out, and while listening to the 10-minute version of All Too Well, I clicked on my camera roll and went back to the photos that I know exist, but never look at.

I deleted every single photo I had on my phone of the man that before now, I wasn’t able to get over.

Every single photo got deleted. Not only photos of him, but the trips we took, the concerts and venues went to, every single drink we drank and cool photos of cute coffees in big cities.

I counted them, too. 

I wasn’t willing to let go, until now.

I know that people in marriages or happy relationships and might read this (just kidding, no one will read this) and think that it’s not normal to keep talking about that relationship.

But here’s the thing: I’m not married and I don’t have kids. I don’t know what that’s like. I really don’t even know what normal is like.

What I do know is that there are now memories on my phone that I want to keep forever, and that I now have no more room for those photos on my phone.

I don’t have room for that in my life. 

I don’t want to be a part of that story anymore.

Healing is weird. I still don’t know how or why it happens when it does. Sometimes it takes a week to get over someone, and sometimes it takes years.

I think sometimes you have to see beautiful things states away for the first time as a reminder that there’s a life out there that’s worth living, and that life doesn’t involve the person you can’t get over.

If that’s what it takes to get over someone, then maybe I should have done it sooner. 

But I didn’t because I didn’t know any better.

So congratulations to everyone in this story who moved on, which happens to be everyone except myself.

My advice to the new people in these people's lives?

I’m sorry. These people are complete train wrecks, and although I will never know you, I know that you don’t deserve the misery they’ll eventually bring to your life. 

And I’m sorry that you’re both in relationships with people who haven’t taken the time to heal themselves.

You don’t really know how important that is until you experience it yourself.

—

That’s where I’m at right now. 

All over the place, yes, but that’s life sometimes.