Nothing in Life Is Permanent
I used to think five years was a promise. Long enough to feel permanent, long enough to build habits, inside jokes, shared silences. Long enough to believe that if something lasted this long, it must be meant to stay.
But nothing in life is permanent—no matter how deeply we want it to be.
Ending a five-year relationship feels less like a breakup and more like losing a version of yourself. I didn’t just say goodbye to a person; I said goodbye to routines, to future plans spoken softly at night, to the comfort of knowing exactly who would be there at the end of a hard day. The sadness didn’t arrive all at once. It came in waves—while folding clothes, passing familiar places, hearing songs that once meant “us.”
What hurt the most wasn’t the ending itself, but the remembering. Remembering how natural it all once felt. How love didn’t feel fragile back then. How I never imagined learning how to live without it.
There’s a strange loneliness that comes after something long ends. People assume you’re strong because time has passed, but they don’t see the quiet moments—the ones where grief sits patiently, waiting for you to slow down. Healing isn’t loud. It’s slow. It’s learning how to sit with the sadness without letting it define you.
I’m still sad. And that’s okay. Five years mattered. Loving deeply leaves marks, and I don’t want to pretend it didn’t. If nothing in life is permanent, then neither is this pain. One day, the memories will soften. One day, the ache will turn into gratitude for having loved at all.
My healing doesn’t look like isolation or grand realizations. It looks like laughter—sometimes forced at first, then real when I least expect it. It looks like friends who don’t ask too many questions, who let me be distracted, who remind me that I am still here, still living. It looks like going out even when I’d rather stay in, choosing movement over stillness because stillness lets the sadness get too loud, way too loud.
I fill my days with noise on purpose. Coffee dates that run long, late-night drives with music turned up, strumming on guitar strings with mood songs and those are the moments where I forget, just for a second, that my heart was ever broken. And in those seconds, I breathe easier. I remember that joy didn’t leave with you—it just needed space to return.
Some people heal by sitting with their pain. I heal by stepping away from it, little by little. By proving to myself that happiness can exist without guilt, that smiling doesn’t mean I loved any less. It just means I’m choosing myself now.
There are still quiet nights. There always will be. But they no longer scare me the way they used to. Because I’m learning that healing isn’t about erasing the past—it’s about building a life so full that the sadness no longer takes up all the room.
And maybe nothing in life is permanent. Not love, not loss, not even this version of me. But right now, I’m choosing laughter. I’m choosing connection. I’m choosing to keep going.
If given another time, I would still repeat it all.
Those were beautiful moments in my life.
Thank you for appearing in my life.
I don’t regret us.
