There’s Beauty In Heartbreak

Heartbreak. It sucks. There’s no way to describe it other than that. It’s a pain that stings you so much that you eventually go numb.

You go from feeling your heart literally shatter into a pile of pieces to a pile of blackness: no more sadness, no more anger, no happiness, no emotions, nothing at all.

You go from suffocating mentally with your mind fogged of the damaging words and behavior, or absence of behavior, that has been thrown your way from the one who you never imagined would even think about hurting you, to replaying every moment, every second of both the good and bad scenes in your head without even being able to react to it anymore other than having a blank slate on your face.

You go from suffering physically with the days that you can not do a thing without drowning yourself in your own tears or hyperventilating so much that you eventually throw up because every thing you do reminds you of “them”, to just sitting in silence for hours because you’d rather listen to nothing at all than risking the possibility of being able to connect anything you hear with the one who was once your everything. You do not feel anything anymore other than alone.

Sometimes you wish you were no longer paralyzed even if that meant feeling the misery of heartbreak that you would never even wish on your own worst enemy. Some nights you might put your “sad” playlist of songs that hit home on repeat or reread old text messages and listen to the voicemails that at one point you couldn’t bear listening to. Putting yourself through that may work or it may not. Either way, you just want to feel anything. It is draining no longer being mournful but not being lively yet. You don’t want to be “nothing” anymore.

With time you start feeling upbeat again. There is still that lingering feeling of knowing the one who was one of the most significant people in your life is now just a memory, but you have healed enough to no longer let it interfere with your every day life. As you become yourself again and feel alive, you start focusing on what’s most important in your life: yourself. You look back at your heartbreak and become thankful for the devastating reality that you got to experience. In that moment you recognize the lessons you learned from heartache and start to believe that everyone should be exposed to it at least once in their life.

As cliché as it is, you acknowledge all of the valuable things you took for granted. With heartbreak you are physically ill. Your heart is being ripped out and dragged through the dirt by someone else to the point where you can no longer stand up for yourself, literally. All you feel up to doing is stuffing your face into your soaking pillow of sobs and streaks of mascara. You do not want to leave your bed for days and some days you honestly can not. There are even days where you can’t even lay in your bed and look at your phone because every social media account is involved with love somehow. Or you might not be able to look at it because it is a reminder you can no longer go to “that person” when you are having a bad day.

This is okay, this is your body’s way of healing, but at the same time it is the worst feeling in the world because you don’t want others thinking you are lazy, there is seriously nothing you can do. When the day finally does come where you are up to simply getting ready for the day or even going somewhere, you appreciate your body for the amount of strength it truly has. You realize that mental days are nice, but being able to get out of bed and explore your life is nicer.

You take risks of all forms. You might do something you’ll totally regret one day, like get that tattoo that your ex begged you not to get, or something more low-key, such as scheduling appointments weekly to see a therapist. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll start hitting up the gym that you promised yourself you were going to go to six months ago. There is nothing wrong with any coping mechanism and the most exciting part is, is that you are able to test out which form works best for you. This period of time is to focus on yourself and only yourself so take all of the risks possible.

You learn who your true friends are. With heartbreaks comes emotions and with emotions often comes long and tiring venting sessions. Some friends might get sick and tired of you venting all of the time but never apologize, you need someone to talk to and it’s healthier than keeping your feelings bottled up.

Other friends will act the exact opposite and check up on you daily until they know you are doing better or will do small things for you to make sure you are starting to feel yourself again. Heartbreak really shows who is there for you and who is only there for you as long as it benefits them. True friends will always be there for you and will make it known that they are.

You are learning to love yourself. This is the most beautiful stage of heartbreak. You learn all of accomplishments that you can succeed and figure out what you want to pursue. Heartbreak is your biggest teacher in the sense that it allows you to appreciate all of wonderful things you can do on your own. Heartbreak makes you admire all of the marvelous traits about yourself. After a heartbreak, you realize that the only person you can really depend on is yourself and you become okay with that fact. All of this leads you to falling in love with yourself.

So thank the person who broke your heart because you learned how to piece yourself back together all by yourself. You learned that there is so much more to life than love and that all you really need in life is yourself. You learned so many lessons that you wouldn’t have been able to without having your heart ripped into a billion pieces, and that is truly the beautiful thing about heartbreak.