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I'm lucky, I guess. We were together for about a year, and started up around this time. I don't have any Christmas day or Christmas eve memories of her to kick me in the gut right now.

I did however, find an old hard drive while I was cleaning out a room today and found old videos of us back from long ago when we were just friends.

I knew something like that would be on it, but I checked it anyway, the same way I have the urge to check facebook even though I know it will cause pain (I still don't understand why I would be so masochistic).

Seeing that hit me hard about losing a friend, which I haven't really processed as much as losing a SO.

So here I am anyway, Christmas Eve. Alone. Feeling worse than I have in weeks. I'm so many years older now than in the videos, and I've also lost her from my life.

I've been doing really well, and I know this will pass. I will feel better again.

But I want nothing more than to contact her. It feels impossible, utterly impossible that she is not in my life like she used to be. This is the hardest part - that it makes no sense to me. It makes no sense.

All this pain and my brain can't understand why. I think that is making this wound close as slowly as it is.

I'm sorry. I really don't know what else to do other than to write it here. My thanks to this board any everyone on it.

Hello homefree,

Merry Christmas 

Two years out, and I still find it hard to toss a few significant pictures. It s natural to be triggered, and also to want to keep those attachments (if you do), remnants of better times. The first Christmas (while she was still loving here, but we were no more) was very hard for me, and even the second. I'm almost embarrassed to say it took two years for me to reach peace, but it came. It's tough... .

T

I still have a photo book she gave me for our one year anniversary. I don't look at it but I won't throw it out. My goal isn't to erase her completely from my life. It's to just move on from her and learn from the mistakes I made by staying in the relationship.

This wasn't supposed to be a bad time for me. I have no memories of her from Christmas, so I don't have anything to compare it to, I thought,

I realize that wasn't true. We weren't together for Christmas, since she was seeing her family and I wasn't even known publicly at that time by any of her family or friends.

But we were 'together' during that time, and it had a growing sense of joy in me during that time. The family/Christmas part was exactly as it has been, but there was this little something extra that I was thinking about during it, and we were texting occasionally.

Now that part is missing. And it amazes me how everything I've done today feels like it is just a tiny blip on the enjoyable meter, as if nothing can get past a certain level, then hits a brick wall. And in the mean time I'm picturing her, happy with her family and her new love, like everything is even better than last time because the family knows about him at this point.

I feel like I'm just moving through this time one minute at a time, just trying to keep it together. Sometimes I forget, which is a good sign, and I enjoy myself. But then there is a lull and I remember and I feel like I'm in this tiny world that's yellowed with age and empty. I keep feeling like being with my family will give me comfort, but it's not working. There must be something about the holidays that makes everything feel different than it normally would.

I hate that when the wave hits me again, I never seem to be ready for it, or it's a time I never expect it to come. Like I should be able to predict it.

I can say for sure that I want it to be 2016 as soon as possible.

I had a relationship a long time ago who's pictures would trigger me many years afterwards.

It's been so long now, though, that I have accepted her as a part of my past and there are no real feelings other that of pictures from any other time of my (pretty distant) past.

I wonder how I will view this time many years from now.

Judging by the way my life has changed in the last two months, I will most likely view it as an extremely valuable experience.