Getting Over Her Ex

This Summer has been the Summer of My Daughter’s Broken Heart. She’s experienced periodic break-ups and make-ups with her boyfriend of just under a year. He lived with us for six months, when his mom turned him out, so sometimes my feelings about the kids get a little colored by position as mother (or substitute mother) to  both of them.

At this point, however, I’m clearly all-in on the Bay side.  The kid is in agony, grieving her lost love, and sad. She started school this week and is still in constant contact with him via cell phone or the computer.

Here’s a purely selfish thought – I don’t know if I will ever get another good night of sleep again because Bay has been sleeping with me for a week. I wake up and I’ve been sleeping on my right side all night. No moving. I’m stiff and my ear aches. I’m starting to hate my pillow and the view of the back of my alarm clock. 

She doesn’t want to go into her own room, the place she and her ex-beau  hung out and watched tv, played videos games, talked. I think it’s where they fell in love. She acts scared of the room and sort of darts in and out. I spent hours in there yesterday cleaning and rearranging while she was at school. I bought her new bedding, repainted her tv stand (from pink to black), hung her black curtains, bought her a new black bedside table, dusted, dusted, dusted, did the windows……..I was in there forever. When she got home from school, she was mad that I wanted her to go check it out. She snapped at me. And she said she could not sleep in there yet.

Friday evening she made plans to go out with friends, this included her ex, but for some reason she stayed home with the rest of the family. I was looking at Kelli’s piece on breakups and broken hearts and I think that it’s really time and distance  that get you over a lost love. You can’t force it and you sure can’t force it on someone else. Kellis says, “Don’t try to get him back,” and I think that’s what Bay would like to do, but that impedes the moving forward process.

Kelli’s piece says that it didn’t work because it wasn’t a match. I’m not at all sure that’s the case here.

I’ve spent a lot of time with these kids and they were a pretty tight unit. They were very supportive of each other. They are young and Bay’s ex-beau is putting a lot of weight into what his buddies are telling him, “My friends say I should be single.” 

Until that boy becomes more of a man (again, time is key), one whom can think for himself, I think it’s best that Bay move on. She’s a strong young woman and I look forward to seeing her smile again. There have been glimpses of it this week, in particular when she tried on a new dress at Forever 21.  She looked pretty darn smashing. Like I said, she’s strong. I love my girl.

Image credit: Michelle Smith