How to get over a past relationship

Hello,

I'm a 30 year old woman and I don't know where to seek help at this point so I'm just leaving a message here in the hope to get some advice - this might be quite long.

I met a girl 10 years ago at university. The first time I saw her I actually felt something "different". It was the first time I felt that way for a girl and we started off as friends. We would just meet from time to time, nothing much, although I had this butterfly feeling everytime I was meeting her. We eventually moved to different countries later on and just kept in touch every once in a while. 6 years ago we started talking on a more frequent basis, out of the blue, and it just became constant. We would spend days and nights on the phone, talking, texting. I honestly never felt a connection like that with anyone else.

At that time I had a boyfriend and she told me she had a girlfriend who wanted to get married with her (I didn't know she liked girls until then). She confessed she liked me and broke off with her girlfriend. It took me a while to break up on my side as well because at that time it seemed impossible for me to 1) leave my boyfriend and hurt him, although I could see more and more we were just becoming friends and 2) be with a girl...

But I eventually did and we got together. Problem is we were living in different countries and could only see each other few times a year. I would have loved to move and be closer to her but she lives in the US and it's not that easy to immigrate there. I also never told my friends or my family she was my girlfriend because I just felt so scared to say it. I would pretend she was a friend. She had told a couple of her friends about me. Then covid hit and we didn't meet for a while.

We were honestly so much in love but things started to go downhill at some point and in January 2022 she told me that even though she has feelings for me she wanted to break up because she didn't want to do long distance anymore and she was upset I wouldn't tell anyone she's my girlfriend. I didn't take the news that bad at the time. I understood her reasons and I was a bit relieved in a way, I didn't have to stress about hiding anymore plus we were having more and more arguments I was sick of.

But as time went by I just couldn't get her out of my head. I tried everything: meeting new guys, not talking to her for a while, repeating to myself I just hated how we would argue and how sad I felt when this happened. But nothing worked. For all that time she would continue to flirt with me from time to time, even until April and would show jealousy when I told her I was talking to a new guy.

Then she completely stopped talking to me for a month and it made me so incredibly sad, even more than I already was. Things just started getting really bad for my mental health. Not only I felt like I lost my lover I also felt like I lost my best friend, whom I used to tell everything. On top of that my grandma passed away, one of my university friend passed away, I got issues at work with a colleague etc. It's been a month I'm crying everyday at work, when I get home, in the shower, I wake up in the middle of the night to cry some more. I try to do things that used to keep me happy and busy but I break down as soon as I stop.

I felt so bad so I decided to reach out to her after a month and she told me she's seeing someone now. I was expecting this moment would come one day or another but it just felt like the final stab in the heart. She also finally came out to her parents and I can see that she is ready to live her life as her true self now. I want her to be happy and I don't want to cause problems with her new relationship although that breaks my heart. Maybe it's all in my head but I can feel she still has something for me. Maybe it's just affection, I don't know. But she's well aware she cannot have the life she wants with me, at least in the near future.

I am going to try to stop talking to her and leave her alone, for her sake and for mine. I thought we could keep in touch as friends but it's just not possible when feelings are involved. I don't know how long I'll be able to withstand it though. But now I don't know how to help myself feel better. I've always kept everything to myself to make everyone happy and now I'm just about to explode.