Feel chronically stuck between obsession and moving on
Hi,
So I had a really bad situation last spring that I'm still dealing with. Some background, as a kid, I always was very expressive emotionally, to the point where it wasn't socially acceptable as a dude, and by middle school I was somewhat consciously suppressing my emotions between 70-95% of the time. The only time where I would let myself feel strong emotions was when it was 100% safe. The walls began to fall during high school, and collapsed during my last year.
A bit over a year ago, I fell for a girl who I didn't know super well. First it started out as a crush, then it became a bit obsessive due to fantasization. I basically had a list of things that I wanted in a girl, and she checked all of the boxes and I was very strongly drawn to her. I made a move on her, asked her to go to prom, and she said yes (as friends). Because of this, I felt so good to be spending time with her, because it validated me and made me feel seen like nothing else could. If she could like me, then I was okay. Her reciprocation varied, sometimes matching what I was giving and sometimes being close to nothing. She said in the beginning that she wasn't a "relationship person", which confused me and I pushed aside. I felt so alive just being with her and spending time with her, it was like I could finally feel everything. After prom (which was great in a lot of ways but weird in others) we talked over text a couple times about what we wanted, she didn't want anything serious and I just wanted her, no matter what, so we hung out a couple times before I stopped hearing from her. She ghosted me for about a week, we talked about it, she said she really wanted to keep hanging out with me but didn't want a relationship, I said that I needed to think about it. By the time I told her I wanted to keep spending time with her, she had changed her mind. I've always suspected that one of her friends told her she was leading me on and she needed to stop spending time with me so that I could move on.
I was thrown into a deep depressive state after this. It felt like my life lost all meaning. I felt so good being around her, just hanging out and talking, and that was taken away from me without any notice or care. After not landing an internship, I decided I wasn't going to waste my life moping so I started doing yardwork for people, and made a ton of money and jumpstarted a business. Then when the semester started, I kept busy with high-commitment clubs and organizations, and was shoveling and working throughout winter break. But through it all, I knew I wasn't experiencing the full scale of my emotions because I was alone, and none of the girls I met could compare to the one I lost.
So here's my problem; I want to improve myself so that I can be independent, but I can't do that since I know I am missing a crucial part of my life when being single and I feel emotionally empty, but I also can't set my goals on some girl that's somehow better than the one I lost, because that's propegating the cycle of codependency. I feel so empty and so stuck on something that I desperately want to move on but can't, because the only thing that can geniunely replace what we had is another relationship, which is extremely unhealthy.
Any help would be wonderful. There's a lot more I could talk about but I want to stay relevant to the main problem.