6 Things I Wish I Knew About Heartbreak

When The Script crooned, “When a heart breaks, no, it don’t break even,” the band was really onto something.

Truly, when someone who was once embedded into the very fabric of your soul must part, not only does it pain endlessly, but it is also a humbling, eye-opening experience.

Nothing lasts. Perhaps it’s not meant to. But you can learn what to expect to ease the pain.

1. You lose a part of yourself you didn’t know was vital

No one tells you that a part of you dies when your roads separate, plunging the very fork that arrives in your path straight into your heart.

2. The way you love will never be the same

The way you loved them—the purity, the obsessiveness, the attraction, the madness—you can’t imitate that, try as you may.

What follows next could be better or worse, but it cannot be replicated, and perhaps it’s for the best.

3. The way love will never be the same

After you walk away in pursuit of greener pastures, you’re different in each consequent conversation about love.

You’re different when you fight. Maybe you don’t talk as much. Maybe you don’t stop talking at all. Maybe it breaks you like never before, or maybe it doesn’t bother you at all. But it never feels the way it did with your first love.

And perhaps it never will.

4. There’s a void left behind—a gaping wound—that must be tended to, grieved, and laid to rest

From being a part of each other’s routines to becoming a weekly formal exchange, if that. From being one call away to throw a tantrum to walking on eggshells. From loving someone with an open heart to shielding yourself from inevitable pain.

It’s a journey, a process, a terrifying path. Yet, you must traverse it.

5. The pain will keep you up at night or will have you sleeping at the oddest hours

Daylight is when you’re reminded that you must continue onward without seeing their name pop up on your phone. Daylight is when you must pretend that you’re not in a world of pain, faking a smile for everyone else. Daylight is when quivers seem to seep into each “I’m fine” because you’re not.

Falling asleep during the day to numb it all is much easier than acknowledging and grieving the unbearable loss of the love you once treasured.

Is it easier to stay up at night, holed up alone, deprived of all responsibilities, watching the pain go up in smoke? Sure. But temporary numbing prolongs the pain.

Feel it.

Grieve it.

Bury it.

6. You will feel like you will never love again, but you will, and you will be happy

Staying is easier. It’s safe. It’s your comfort zone. Maybe you can take the abuse and the disrespect. Maybe you can live with what you did to them.

But you have to shake that idea off and carry onwards and upwards.

Perhaps for your own sake. Perhaps for theirs. Perhaps for a tomorrow that might alter the very routine you’re used to altogether.

But move on, you must.

When you feel this emotional storm taking you under, remember that you’re not alone. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

If you are a ship tossing endlessly in the rough ocean, there is land at the end of this tumultuous journey. Out of sight, sure, but you must will it in your mind.

Nothing breaks like a heart, they say. And how true, for all that falls must break. Yet all that breaks must mend, and mend you will, one way or another.