The Bitter Truth About Why You Suck At Moving On

We talk a lot about moving on, about letting go. We talk a lot about healing, about putting the pieces of ourselves back together after we’re broken. We talk about releasing and saying goodbye, coming clean and washing away our pain.
We write and we cry and we write some more. We vent to our friends and our therapists until they’re simply regurgitating the same advice over and over again about the same problems we can’t seem to stop talking about. We read self-help books and articles and we say, “Today’s the day!” with fists extended ready to take on the world with a heart that is no longer heavy and hurting.

And…then we don’t.

We don’t move on. We linger, we stay. We stay stuck in a repetitive cycle of being hurt and talking about how to get better instead of actually getting better. Talking about how to let go. Talking about washing away that pain. Talking about how to move on.

We talk a lot about moving on, but often we’re doing just that.

Just talking about it.

Because the reality of the situation? The honest to God, cold hard truth? The real talk, no holding back, bitter truth about why you suck at moving on?

You aren’t moving on because you don’t want to.
That’s it. Really. That’s it.

You’re staying stagnant in your pain, sulking in your own self-indulgent pool of misery because you’re comfortable there. It’s easier than starting over. You’re familiar with the act of prodding your own wounds so you sit there, day after day putting metaphorical salt in your cuts and then whining about how much it stings. You can basically continue on in this circle of reliving bad memories, and feeling sorry for yourself for an endless amount of time because it’s simple.
You suck at moving on because you aren’t willing to change your own life. You keep waiting for someone, something to change it for you. And when that doesn’t happen you just sit, still waiting and still transfixed on the thing you claimed to be letting go of in the first place.

You’re not moving on because you would rather talk about your pain, live in this bubble of masochism that you’ve created for yourself, continuing to play the victim because it’s easy. It requires absolutely no effort.

Moving on means doing something. It means breaking the cycle. It means taking control of your own happiness.
The thing is, we’ve all been there. We’ve all gone through a period or two (or three or four or seventeen) where we are terribly self-interested little masochists. Periods of time where all we want to do is pick at our own scabs and then ask other people if they have a bandage handy. Periods of time where realistically, we know we’re responsible for our own heartbreak, our own pain, but we’re drawn to it like a moth to a flame so we just keep burning our fingers.

It happens.

But it’s not the period of masochism and total self-asborbsion with our own problems that defines you.

It’s what you do after.

It’s how long you allow yourself to stay stuck in a pit of “I can’t let go.” It’s whether or not you recognize that at the end of the day no one but YOU can define your own happiness, so you pick yourself up and stop talking about moving on, and actually fucking do it. It’s the decision to stop allowing yourself to be defined by one bad thing, and instead go out and create new things that you would want your name next to.

The bitter truth about why you suck at moving on is that really, you probably don’t suck at moving on at all.

You just need to choose to actually do it.