I WANT YOU OUT OF MY HEAD

There are moments when a single person, with all their charming smiles, inexplicable quirks, and utterly addictive presence, somehow takes up more space in your mind than you’d like. A certain someone had done just that to me. And now, despite every conscious decision to forget, the effort to move on, and all the sage advice my friends had offered, I was trapped. Or, more accurately, they were trapped in my head. My mind had become their playground, and the eviction process? Impossible.

It started with the basics: tiny reminders everywhere. Their name on coffee cups, a familiar laugh on the subway, or a scent that would somehow hit me just right in the middle of a random street, pulling me back into a memory I hadn’t signed up to replay. I was beginning to think I’d developed a sense of synesthesia, but one specifically built to haunt me.

Of course, I knew the steps: clear them from my life. Unfollow, unfriend, unsubscribe. Block if necessary. “Out of sight, out of mind” was the mantra I’d muttered to myself every day. And it was easy! The digital age has made that part foolproof. I could click a button and — bam! — they were gone. But, unfortunately, “out of sight” did not equate to “out of head,” which I came to discover with a bizarre mix of humor and horror. I couldn’t simply block my brain.

I tried the whole “Goodbye” ritual. I wrote letters (unsent, of course) filled with thoughts I’d kept buried, making sure every unspoken word and bottled-up feeling was thrown onto the page. Some were funny, some sarcastic, others downright bitter, but mostly, they were raw. And, like most advice columns suggested, I burned each one in some amateurish fire ritual on my balcony. Imagine my disappointment when I realized I was essentially smoking my own hopes for closure without a single effect other than charred pages. The “goodbye” I so desperately sought didn’t catch fire with the pages.

My friends, of course, were only too eager to lend their expertise on the subject. “Try mindfulness,” one suggested. Now, look, mindfulness is excellent in theory. But trying to be present with yourself when the “self” you’re left with is screaming a one-person monologue about a certain someone isn’t exactly what I’d call soothing. “Breathe them out,” she said. Sure, I thought, I’ll just exhale an entire person. Simple! After ten minutes of deep breathing that got me light-headed and two near-panic attacks, I gave up. It turns out my mind had become an eternal holding cell for one tenant and one tenant alone.

Humor was my only ally. So I leaned into it, in part because laughing about your misery beats crying over it any day. I made it a game to pick out their annoying qualities like a list of mental sticky notes, reciting each one with an exaggerated shudder. They were awful with time management. They had a terrible laugh, the kind that sounded like a hyena who’d swallowed a megaphone. And they were terribly impulsive with plans. See? Ridiculous, every bit of it. Except, of course, that none of it helped, because after each note I’d remind myself that, somehow, these flaws had only made them more… real. More human. More heartbreakingly unforgettable.

Every day was a battle between nostalgia and reality. Morning would hit, and with it, the realization that the world had the audacity to keep spinning despite my heart’s little glitch. So, I began developing what I called the “Forget-You Bucket List.” It’s like a regular bucket list, but every item was designed to eradicate their existence from my mind in increasingly absurd ways. Item one? Go skydiving and scream them out. It had sounded therapeutic in theory. I paid a ridiculous amount for a jump, all to hurl their name into the void while I plummeted toward earth. But the endorphins just made me miss them even more. Epic fail.

In the end, I discovered something unexpected: this experience, as irritating and heart-wrenching as it was, had given me a gift. No, not some divine clarity or secret insight into the human experience — that would be too convenient. It gave me the maddening realization that sometimes people don’t leave your head simply because you haven’t yet lived the story fully. It was like each lingering thought, every memory, was my heart’s way of working through something bigger, something that I, frustratingly, hadn’t understood. And maybe that was okay.

I realized that the true “goodbye” was less about erasing every thought or unfeeling every feeling. It was more like letting those memories move from the front row of my mind, where they shouted their stories on loop, to a quieter place in the back where they’d occasionally wave but no longer demand center stage. And yes, maybe sometimes they’d still be stubborn, making unexpected guest appearances when I least expected. But perhaps this was all just the unglamorous part of human connection — the ache that insists on being felt, the slow crawl to a less invasive memory.

So, with a wry smile and an exhausted laugh, I finally said “Goodbye” not just to them but to my own frustration and to the illusion that I could have rushed the process. After all, I’d tried everything under the sun — even skydiving! — and nothing had erased them. Maybe they’d linger forever, maybe they wouldn’t. But for now, I was content knowing they no longer occupied my every waking thought. It wasn’t complete freedom, but it was a peace I could live with.