15 to 30: heartbreak

My Past Accomplishment: Surviving Heartbreak

During my last semester of college, my head was telling me to move to Los Angeles after graduation to pursue a career in film publicity and promotion – but my heart wanted me to relocate to Washington, DC to live near the boy I’d been dating long distance. We met during Spring Break the second semester of my junior year, and, except for the summer before my senior year, we were living in different states.

Partly because it was difficult to find a job out in Hollywood and partly because I was anxious to see how our relationship would change if we lived in the same city, I ended up in the nation’s capital. Little did I expect our relationship to change so suddenly – and not for the better. We used to talk about one day getting married, moving to Colorado and getting a truck and a yellow lab. But just three months after I moved to DC to be near him (thankfully we had decided not to live together), I learned in a most dramatic fashion that he was cheating on me – and had been for months.

I was devastated. Thrown through a loop. Did I really rearrange my life for the opportunity for us, as a couple, to work? And we didn’t? He was my first true love, but I was not his. I was young and naive. Even after I found out that he was cheating on me, I didn’t want us to break up. I wanted him to want to be with me, not her, and to get help for his infidelity. He didn’t want that, and I was shattered even more – if possible.

I didn’t think I would ever recover from the heartbreak. It was debilitating. And to be honest with you, it took years to finally be able to move on. The impact of the break up affected me significantly, but despite all of the pain, I did survive – and that’s an accomplishment.

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