This Why You Should Always Remember Your Heartbreak

I know that right now, it’s painful.

I know that it might still hurt you when you hear their favorite song on the radio, causing you to flashback to their ridiculous dance moves in the car. Or sitting down in their preferred place to eat and remembering how their eyes used to glance up from the table to meet yours, causing you to blush. Or you smell the cologne they used to wear, and recall how it felt to be wrapped in their arms, or your head on their shoulder, feeling like this was home.

Those memories might still hit you like a ton of bricks and all you want to do is forget, forget, forget. Because remembering means pain, remembering means being forced to recognize what you lost and how you had them one day and then they were gone the next.

You wish you could just rip them out of your memories. Go under a knife and have them cut away every last smile, quote, and picture from your mind. If you could just go back and act like you never knew them, then they could never hurt you. A person you never knew can’t hurt you, can’t leave you behind.

I can’t honestly tell you that tomorrow will be so much better. I can’t say that it won’t take a long time to heal. I can’t pretend that you will wake up one day and forget he ever existed.

Here is what I can promise you.

Things will get better.

Maybe they get worse before they do; maybe everything will overwhelm you and you just aren’t sure that you can breathe, much less live. You won’t stay that way though; eventually things do start to get better. Maybe it happens all at once, or it happens in little pieces, in every morning that you wake up and do something for you. In every time that you take a step in a new path, or laugh at something hilarious, or go out of your way to smile at someone new.

Yet things do get better.

The ache does ease; the hurt does fade. You will pick up your broken pieces and find some way to make them work together again. You will heal and you will manage to close all the doors that their ghost used to keep their foot in.

And one day, you’ll skim through the radio stations, when their favorite song will play. Or you’ll sit down in that preferred restaurant and order a meal. Or you’ll inhale that familiar scent that you used to crave, that used to be them.

You’ll remember, but it won’t crush you. You’ll see them as someone who at one time brought you happiness and laughter. A small part of you might feel a tinge of sadness, but you’ll look back with a smile, see their face pop up in your mind, and you’ll remember that what you had was good. It was real. It was memorable.

And you’ll be so grateful that you didn’t forget.