“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.” -Neil Gaiman
It was one of those things everyone approached me with much sympathy about. Because when you get completely blindsided by an ex, even if everyone around you saw it coming, people look at you and see pain behind any failed mask you try to hide behind.
I remember standing there at a family party and all everyone kept telling me were stories of their first love and how “what’s meant to be will be.” (Like that was helping.) Others questioned well do you think it was real? I looked at them puzzled, thinking back to the nights I cried myself to sleep that week.
I wish it wasn’t real. It all just seemed like a nightmare you don’t wake up from. You slug through the motions of life, feeling only half alive, looking for anything to cling to, to get you through it.
I had just turned 21. I chugged a straight cup of vodka, not a shot… a cup. My best friend just looked at me, knowing what was bound to come and held me as I wept in the privacy of my room.
A professor pulled me into her office concerned about me, “you’re taking 24 credits, you’re in a sorority, you play division III volleyball, you have a job and an internship and volunteer at the local nursing home on the weekends, you’re gonna have a nervous breakdown.” I didn’t tell her I was completely heartbroken. I didn’t tell I’d rather be busy with productive things, than how I spent my first legal summer, crying in the girls bathroom at smelly dive bars. I didn’t tell her about how often I’d just breakdown and cry over him. I didn’t tell her, I’d go to the gym at 4AM just cause I couldn’t sleep at night, because every dream he met me in, haunting me in my sleep. I didn’t tell her I lost 15 pounds and people noticed but didn’t say anything, because how do you ask someone if they are okay, when clearly they weren’t? I thought if I stayed busy, I wouldn’t think about it.
That was my first heart break. It was waking up with this pain inside me. It was opening my eyes and being mad that I couldn’t just keep sleeping. Because if I were asleep I wasn’t feeling pain. It was hearing our song and not changing it because there was something quite inviting about the memories. It was running over every detail of the person he turned into and not really understanding why.
Like I did, I know you don’t think it’ll get better. You think you’ll live with that pain forever.
But, one day you wake up and he’s not the first thing you think of. One day, your heart won’t beat when he texts you. One day, you’ll stop looking at his facebook or insta. One day you won’t try to make him jealous. And one day you’ll be over it. And one day you’ll be shocked you survived it.
When you get out of that vortex of the dark cloud you are in, you’ll come out a different person in the end. You’ll stand knowing you overcame it.
Not only do you overcome it, but in enough time, you begin to forget the pain he caused, in the first place.
You begin to date again, but this time you do it smarter, not being as vulnerable as you were the first time. Each heartbreak does make you stronger and better.
Then when you get far enough to a point where you can look back at it all, without tears… something wonderful will happen. You realize how better off you are without him in your life. Not even that, but you can’t even imagine dating him ever again. Then like you always wished, in those nights you cried yourself to sleep, he’ll come back. He’ll be back missing you. The person who gets hurt worse, always ends up with the upper hand in the end. I promise you that.
You’ll look at him and those things you once liked about him, you’ll find yourself repulsed by. You may have conversations, but it will always be when you feel like answering. You like having the power in it, but more than that you don’t really care too much about the person on the receiving end. They had an opportunity at something great.
You realize, they were the ones to blow it, not you.
You will heal. You will walk away with self-confidence. Then you look at him and realize, dating him again would be settling. And that’s when you win. That’s when that crying turns to laughter.
“The world will break your heart ten ways to Sunday. That’s guaranteed. I can’t begin to explain that. Or the craziness inside myself and everyone else. But guess what? Sunday’s my favorite day again. I think of what everyone did for me, and I feel like a very lucky guy.” -Silver Linings Playbook
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