Moving on is a funny thing. People talk about it like it's a decision. Like one morning you just wake up and choose to be okay.
It doesn't work like that.
The days after that conversation blurred into something shapeless. I went to lectures. I took notes. I answered questions when the lecturers asked. On the outside, I was fine. A functional 100-level Pharmacy student doing what he was supposed to do.
On the inside, I was a mess.
---
The test came on Friday.
Pharmaceutical Chemistry.
I sat in the hall, my question paper face down, and for a solid minute, I couldn't remember a single thing I'd studied. The formulas were gone. The drug classifications were gone. Everything I'd crammed into my head had been replaced by two words: another guy.
I closed my eyes. Breathed. Opened them.
Then I wrote. Not my best. Not even close. But I wrote something.
Afterward, walking out of the hall, my friend Fred fell into step beside me.
"How was it?"
"Bad."
He laughed. "Same. That second question crushed me."
I nodded like I remembered what the second question was.
---
The results came three days later.
I stared at the number on my phone for a long time. Fifty-eight. In secondary school, I would have cried over anything below 70. Now I was staring at a 58 like it was a lifeline. Like it meant I hadn't completely fallen apart.
At least I passed, I told myself.
But passing wasn't the point. The point was that I used to be better than this. Before her. Before the breakup. Before the name Mustapha started living in my head rent-free.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
It was past 1 AM. My roommate, Daniel, was snoring softly on the other side of the room. The security lights outside cast pale rectangles on the ceiling. And I was lying on my back, staring at nothing, thinking about her.
Not the breakup. Not the fight. Just her.
The way she laughed at things that weren't funny. The way she'd text "good morning" before I even woke up. The way she said my name — like it meant something.
I wondered if she said Mustapha's name the same way.
I turned over and punched my pillow.
---
The weeks that followed were a strange kind of war.
Some days were okay. I'd wake up, go to a practical, eat lunch with Daniel, study for a bit, and fall asleep without thinking about her once. Those days gave me hope. Made me think I was healing.
Then a bad day would come out of nowhere.
A song would play in the cafeteria. Someone would laugh exactly like her. I'd see a couple holding hands on the walkway, and my chest would tighten like someone was squeezing it from the inside.
Healing isn't linear. I learned that the hard way.
---
The academic pressure didn't stop just because my heart was broken.
Pharmacy wasn't kind to weakness. There were tests to write, practical reports to submit, assignments with deadlines that didn't care if you'd been crying twenty minutes ago. The lecturers moved fast. The material was dense. And everyone around me seemed to be handling it better.
One evening, I was in the library, staring at the same paragraph for thirty minutes. Pharmacokinetics. Absorption. Distribution. Metabolism. Excretion. I'd read it four times. Nothing stuck.
I closed the textbook and rested my head on it.
What is wrong with me?
A hand tapped my shoulder. I looked up. It was a girl from my department — Aisha. She sat across from me sometimes. Quiet. Kept to herself. I didn't know much about her.
"You okay?" she asked, her voice low.
"Yeah," I said automatically. "Just tired."
She looked at me for a moment. Like she didn't believe me. Then she nodded and went back to her seat.
I appreciated that she didn't push.
---
At night, alone in the dark, I did things I'm not proud of.
I checked her profile.
She'd posted a new picture. She was smiling — that small, shy smile I used to love. The caption was a quote about growth and new beginnings.
I wondered if Mustapha took the picture.
I wondered if he was there, just outside the frame, watching her smile the way I used to.
I closed the app. Opened it again. Closed it. Opened it.
Then I uninstalled it.
For three days.
Then I reinstalled it.
---
Daniel noticed something was off.
"You've been quiet," he said one night, both of us doing our separate readings on our beds.
"I'm always quiet."
"Not like this." He set his phone down. "You wanna talk about it?"
I almost said no. Almost gave him the I'm fine that had become my default response to everything. But Daniel had been my roommate for months now. He'd seen me come in late from the library. Heard me tossing at night. Noticed when I stopped laughing at his jokes.
"Girl problems," I said finally.
He didn't laugh or make that ah, women sound some guys make. He just nodded.
"That bad?"
I thought about three years. About a name I'd never say out loud again. About a 58 I probably wouldn't have gotten if my head had been clear.
"Yeah," I said. "That bad."
"Does she go here?"
"No."
"Then forget her." He said it simply, like it was that easy. Like forgetting someone you loved was the same as deleting a file from your phone.
I wanted to be angry at him for saying it. But I knew he meant well.
"I'm trying," I said.
And I was. I really was.
---
Somewhere around the sixth week, something shifted.
Not much. Just a little.
I woke up one morning and the first thought in my head wasn't her. It was I have a practical by 8 AM. I got dressed, grabbed my lab coat, and walked to the lab without checking my phone for messages that wouldn't come.
During the practical, I made a mistake with a titration — added too much indicator, had to start over. The demonstrator, a stern final-year student, made a comment about first-years not paying attention. Normally, it would have annoyed me. That day, I just nodded and started again.
I finished. Got the result right the second time. Packed my things and left.
And for a few hours, I didn't think about her at all.
---
That night, lying in bed, I realized something.
She wasn't coming back. Not the relationship. Not the old us. Not even the friendship we'd tried to pretend we could have.
It was just me now. Me and Pharmacy and this life I was trying to build in a new city, with new people, in a course that demanded everything I had.
I couldn't afford to keep bleeding over someone who had already stopped bleeding over me.
So I made a decision.
Not to forget her — I knew that wasn't possible.
But to stop letting her be the reason I failed.
---
The next morning, I woke up at 6 AM. I read for two hours before my first lecture. I sat in the front row, took notes by hand, asked a question when I didn't understand something. After lectures, I went to the library instead of back to my room.
I didn't check her profile.
I didn't uninstall and reinstall any apps.
I just... lived.
It wasn't easy. Some days, the weight still showed up heavy and unwelcome, sitting on my chest like it had nowhere else to be. But I was learning to carry it. Learning to breathe around it.
Healing isn't a straight line. It's falling and getting up. It's bad days and better days and days that are just okay.
And maybe that was enough for now.