In our society, young love doesn't seem to last very long. A few months go by, and you eventually get tired of one another and break up. For myself, it was quite the opposite. I wasn't expecting to find the love I did, and in the beginning it was the most beautiful experience I've had with relationships. Over a year later, I found myself engaged and over the moon for a man I thought I could spend all my days with. Unfortunately, he didn't feel the same after two months of being engaged and decided to end things between us. It has been quite the journey for me, to actually comprehend what happened and to realize the good that has come out of us not being together anymore.

I went through 3 stages, the first was angry and sad. Obviously when everything first had happened, I was destroyed. This was the man I saw myself building a life with, a family with. I was going to give up attending my dream school, move over a 1,000 miles away from my family, and start being an adult when I'm not even in my 20's. He's in the army, I'm in college, what in the actual hell are we doing, and how are we going to do it? It really didn't matter how, we just wanted this for both of us. So to just see my future crumble in front of me was, to say the least, devastating. I cried for days, both sad tears and angry tears. He didn't treat me the best, and I knew this; I knew he was a not-so-great person our whole relationship, but I was so blinded by what his love meant to me. One thing I want to make clear, is that it's always okay to cry. I cried because it was over, because he abused me emotionally, because I lost a lot of who I was as a person. The list can go on and on about why I was crying, but I was lucky enough to have a support system that told me that I was going to be just fine in the end. If I am going to be honest, the more I talked about what had happened, the more content I felt. Telling people, especially my family, "by the way my fiancé left me for an unexplained reason" eventually made me come to terms with the fact that our relationship was over and there wasn't anything I could do about it.

The hardest part wasn't even over yet, the second stage was the hardest and longest part. This had nothing to do with my ex-fiancé, but all with myself. I eventually sent myself into a depression, overthinking and overanalyzing why our relationship failed and what I could have done to save it earlier. Instead of crying in the arms of family and friends, I started crying to myself to sleep, and crying to myself the shower. I stopped caring about myself; I wouldn't shower for a week and I wouldn't brush my hair for days. I felt the weight of our whole failed engagement on top of me, as if I was the reason we were no longer together. I started thinking about small, certain instances where I was needy or too clingy for his liking and it really pushed me to a place that was dark and quite scary. I've always been insecure, but this really made me think of myself as disgusting and unlovable. But it wasn't the doing of my ex, it was just me doing this. I was talking myself so low that for a hot minute, I didn't think I could be in another relationship for at least a few years. There isn't a lot of details I want to include, because this was just the lowest I have ever felt in my life. The exciting part is that there is only one way to go, and thats up.

The final stage is what I'm in now, and once this is posted it will be finished. It started with me kicking myself in the ass, and picking myself up by the bootstraps. He no longer controller who I could be and what I could do, so this was the time to find the person I lost while dating him. I bought new clothes, clothes that would make me feel good about myself. I started throwing things out that reminded me of him, which was quite hard and it did break my heart just a little more to see even the happiest of times having to die. I went and got my first two tattoos; a cross made of flowers on my back and the University of Alabama script 'A' on my ankle! I surprised myself by actually making it through both of them, I totally thought I was gonna wuss out. I have started trying to talk to new people, and possible start getting on the dating scene again. I'm not sure if I'm ready to be that vulnerable with someone just yet, but a few dates and some free food wouldn't hurt. I'm starting to feel confident with myself again, and I'm so excited to go back to college and have a blast!

In the end, I've come to know that he really doesn't owe me an explanation as to why he ended things. Would it be nice to hear one? Absolutely. But I've also come to term with the fact that I am better off out of that relationship than I ever was in it. God has a plan for me, and I know that when he put me through this experience it was because he knew I could prevail. I don't regret my relationship with my ex, in fact I am very thankful for it. It showed me to trust my instinct, and to never take abuse from anyone no matter how much I love them. I will build myself again from the ground up, and find myself a better woman.