Last Step

Hang with me here.

My heart has been broken for so long that I think that just became comfortable; it became the norm. It does not, under any circumstance, mean I am not happy. It just means it has been broken. I believe the two -- happiness and heartbreak -- can coexist. My heart is just taking a bit to recover.

A friend told me the other day that the last step in healing from heartbreak is by allowing your heart to love again. Actively allowing. Actively giving away your love to someone else -- even with the risk, even with the uncertainty that came with love the first time around, even -- and especially -- when it went poorly the first time around.

That’s f*cking terrifying. I can’t think of anything scarier. I can’t think of anything worse than having to do it all again — the possibility of heartbreak happening again alone has been enough to keep me at bay. It has been enough to keep me in misery for far longer than I deserve. It has been enough for me to reject dates, relationships, prospects, dating apps, and everything in between. 

It has been enough to keep me stern — it has made me have a guard I could not have prepared for. That guard has made me hard as stone, a perpetual poker face. That guard has made four sturdy walls around me at all times, it has made my heart hard, it has given me a complex that if I allow myself to be soft, to let love in again, it will fail and I will be worse off for having loved again, or that I'll be the weak one. That guard has made me, at times, a version of myself I’m not proud of. A version that’s angry, sad, hurt, and in turn, shows these emotions first before any others to the outside world. These walls have made me... not myself. 

This guard is hard to break. Once someone hurts you in a way that cuts so deeply, you’re reluctant to ever pursue love again. It seems foolish at best. Why burden yourself with that fear, potential resentment, anger? Why do that when you could just be in solitude, go about your business, get life done, and have a face cold as a goddamn Iowa winter the entire time you do it? Seems like the easier choice. And it is. 

Here’s why.

Because when you love, and I mean really love... I mean drive-cross-country-apology-hand-delivered-to-your-doorstep-admittance-of-your-wrongs kind of love... you learn who you are. And you learn who others are, too. Because when they show everything BUT love... when they don’t accept the apology, when they lie about dating someone new, when they start a relationship before ending their relationship with you after five years, when they do these things... you learn what love is not. This information is incredibly valuable, because just as it is important to know and recognize what love is, it is damn near equally as important to recognize what love is not.

Real love is work. Real love requires a commitment so deep and a heart so open that it makes you crazy. Real love requires admitting that you'll never be perfect -- far from it, actually. Real love requires a steadfast devotion to enduring the pain that inevitably comes along with it. Real love requires bravery and courage that a coward cannot possible fathom; love is not something weak people do.

I don't think this heartbreak ruined me. I think it led me to first become a version of myself that I hated, and then allowed me to become a version of myself that I love. And that love is unconditional now, broken heart or not. The love for myself is deeply rooted, and this love could not have existed without someone else breaking my heart so aggressively and intently. This love inside of me has offered allowance. I have since allowed people to treat me the way I deserve. I have since allowed myself to fall in love with every part of who I am, even the not-so-hot parts. I have since allowed myself to grieve, to feel the hurt, to feel the anger, to feel the sadness. And now, I have to allow myself to love again.

I'm terrified. Every part of me is filled with fear to do this again. But, each day I feel myself chipping away at this fear more and more. I lose more each day that passes. I lose more fear, I lose more resentment, I lose more sadness, I lose the weight of thinking I didn't deserve love -- real love -- in the first place. I lose over and over again and it has never felt better. The loss of a partner or someone you loved is deeply challenging. But the loss that comes after is worth the hurt.

It's been almost a year since my heart was broken. I still have plenty of moments where I am saddened by how this transpired. I still have plenty of moments of intense anger. But now is when I move forward again. Now is the last step. And now is when I take it.



"Love is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it, or we fight it; we cannot meet it halfway. Without it, we cannot continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality."




P.S. Alexa, play "I Forgot That You Existed" by Taylor Swift.