My partner of four years left me in early May. Though the presentation of it was just that he'd had enough and it was over, the spark, at least, was that a woman he had been friends with for some time was then available and it was an opportunity he couldn't miss. Their relationship has progressed since and solidified in real life. With things now materialized in front of family and friends, its clear that he's never coming back, and ego considered, I'll probably never hear from him again. I have a negging feeling that she'll move to his city and they'll be married within a year. Thinking back, things he had said to me in the weeks leading up to the breakup, during the breakup, and the immediate events that transpired after it all suggest that he's found 'the one' in her.

We've had no contact since the breakup (he made it very clear that it was goodbye and he didn't want to talk, he didn't even confirm reciept of his personal items I had sent to him). But just when I think I've begun to 'cut the cord,' recenter, and focus on myself, at some point nearly every day, I seem to remember some milestone in our past relationship, and imagine it unfolding for them now. For several years, I had been 'the one,' and so many moments we had together were the high-point of my life. Our future seemed written in stone. Its excruciating to feel that he's reached new highs now, and embarrassing and humiliating, not just that he left me and how, but that I'm still so devestated by it and trapped in, when he's long since moved on and its all just history for him. I know he's happier without me, and it makes me ashamed.

I've been fighting this for months, and I'm exhausted. Circumstances in my own life are becoming urgent (I need to finish school, figure out where I'll go and what I'll do then, and at the moment I still have no clue). I can't seem to find any signposts to guide me forward, and I feel like I just keep plodding on as best I can in the direction that I last saw the car that dumped me going, even though its long since passed over the horizon and is never coming back and does not want me to follow it. I just don't know what else to do. My family and peers got tired of hearing about it, I'm tired of it. But I'm still struggling to not spend a large portion of the day stuck in thought, replaying and redacting conversations and events in my head, still living the future that will never happen, or imagining someone else in the place I thought I'd be. It was so sudden and final, and I still feel breathless sometimes when something real forces me to acknowledge that he's actually gone and I'm all alone.

Even though I have the practical 'answers' about why this happened, I still feel confused that he's gone, like I can't figure out why things are this way. I feel detatched and like I'm stuck in an awful surreal nighmare. It sortof feels like my life ended, and I'm a ghost wandering around lost watching other people live. I know, intellectually, that everyone moves on on their own timeline, but his timeline having been so fast feels like its making mine that much longer. I was so sure, how could he have been so sure about something completely different? And I'd internalized him so much that now what is taking its place is his absense and, to be honest, a fixation that I can't seem to break on how he felt his life would be better without me in it, and that it is in fact better. I know its not healthy. I just don't know how to stop it, and four months on its becoming increasingly deep seeded. Its starting to scare me a little because at this point, not only am I proving too weak to move on, I'm running the risk of destroying my life in concrete and practial ways even beyond what him leaving me did (there were a number of real professional, financial, and geographical consequences) if I can't.

And then I start to think 'no wonder he left me, they're both so much more confident, accomplished, and present in their lives than I am'..

I've removed all traces of him from my life (items, emails, voicemails, etc.) and I don't talk to anyone about him anymore. I've been working hard to go through the motions to look 'ok' to the world (exercising, summer trips, finalizing my dissertation, being active in organizations), but this is still so omnipresent in my life its practically like air--invisible but around all the time. Half the day I feel so anxious and antsy from bottling it up that I can hardly wait to just get home and collapse in tears.

Sorry for the long post. Anyways, how do you get someone out of your head? And specifically the idea that you are not in their head? And how do you break these kinds of habits of self-talk?