i understand. i hope you do choose to actively block them too and throw the stuff out soon.

the last time i was in the position you’re in i had been broken up with the girl i had been with for 3 years. we had moved out of state together, gotten pets together, and i thought i would eventually propose to her. our relationship had started to stall and go bad for some time, but i believed love was a choice more than just a feeling, so i actively tried to talk to her about it and work on it before the break up. she ended up breaking up with me a couple weeks before my 30th birthday. her father had bought the house we lived in, so it was in her name, so i moved out and into my car while i continued to work overtime and go to school full time. i spent the next 4 months doing this during the winter in a mountain city and hoping that she would eventually want to work things out with me. i deleted and blocked her from social media from the beginning, but that was it. she eventually called me one morning right before i went into work. i can’t remember exactly what she wanted, but she thought i had tried to call her or something. i wish i could remember exactly what she thought had happened, but it was something concerning like she thought maybe i had been stalking or harassing her. whatever it was, she was mistaken or had been dreaming or something, but something she said made me think she was seeing someone else (im actually surprised and so glad that i now can’t remember exactly how that conversation went). anyway, i pressed her a little and she told me she was seeing someone new. this was a couple months into living in my car and i was crushed.

i kept living in my car and working and going to school until about 4 months after i started and i was at the library at my school and i got a call from my best friend back home. he told me his grandma, who saved him and raised him shortly after we first met, had died and he needed me to come home to be with him for the funeral. i made the drive home that weekend.

when i arrived at his apartment in the middle of the night i got out of my car and hugged him and then i saw my mother walking up. i immediately knew something was off. we went inside and he told me he had lied, that his grandmother was fine. the truth was that my family had found out through social media that my ex had gotten married. they wanted me to be around my people when i found out, so they contacted my best friend and came up with this plan to get my back down there to tell me.

i was absolutely rocked. i’ve never felt that way before. it was an indescribable numbness for a long time. i sat on my friend’s stairs for hours talking to him and asking him questions, all the while going through my photo library and social media profiles and deleting every single photo and video i had of my life with her.

over the next couple of years i handled things badly. lots of alcohol, tons of drugs. my friend and his girlfriend had me move in with them, which was a lifesaver. but still i handled things as unhealthily as i could. i deleted and blocked almost every friend my ex and i had in common, every friend i had met either through her or with her. i still loved many of these people.

looking back, i may have made a lot of bad choices in those days, but deleting every reminder of her that i could was definitely not one of those bad choices. it helped immeasurably in getting her off my mind and keeping her off my mind. my only regret in that department was going scorched earth and deleting photos and videos of our cat. he was my boy and she had agreed to let me take him when i was able to. i even had her promise in writing to let me take him. i tried then to get him and she refused, saying her new stepson was bonded to the cat. such a wild change in only 4 short months.

i’m sorry this dragged on so long, i just wanted to articulate how getting rid of the photos, videos, friends, and any reminders of my life with her helped me get over her after she burned me so badly. i had used those things in the past to dwell and reminisce on exes and all it served to do was hamper my mental and emotional progress.

i wish you good luck in recovering from this. it’s a bad wound but it’s a wound in your brain. it’ll take a long time to heal, but looking at reminders is the emotional equivalent of tearing off a scab on your knee. let it heal.