Breakups aren’t fun, but they are the inspiration for a lot of great songs! Think about it, without heartbreak, we wouldn’t have a ten minute version of “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)”, or “Norman F****** Rockwell” by Lana Del Rey. Heartbreak is the complete opposite of fun and can be very painful, but trust that beautiful things come out of it.
I’m not a professional of heartbreaks, but I have had my fair share of them. There was my first boyfriend in elementary school – let’s call him John. John was the love of my life, or I could’ve sworn he was. He would pick flowers from our school’s garden and place them behind my ear every day at recess until all the flowers in the garden were practically gone. Our teachers scolded John on his chivalrous behavior and how it wasn’t okay for him to ruin the garden for the rest of the students simply to adorn my hair with flowers. John moved away towards the end of the year without telling me. I thought no one would ever love me again that way.
Until I met John the second.
He was the cutest boy at my middle school. We played soccer together during our breaks and after school as well. We’d be the last ones to get picked up from practice when we joined the school’s team and we’d lay down in the field waiting for our rides. I couldn’t tell if he liked me but he liked to look me in the eyes a lot; I don’t think I realized I had eyes before his insistence to look at mine all the time. We both had brown eyes, so I didn’t get it. I tried to remember the details of his face because I knew that the next day at school, we wouldn’t speak until we could play soccer again, so I had to count each freckle in case practice was canceled. John the second talked to a lot of girls though. I soon realized that I was never going to be one of the girls he spoke to at school in front of his friends and witnesses; I was just the girl he spoke to when no one was around.
There were Johns between Johns and Johns not even worth mentioning.
John the Third was the love of my young life. My high school sweetheart, I still call him. He came from a religious family so he always smelled biblical. He became like a religion to me, maybe one I didn’t fully agree with but I didn’t know any other ways to pray. He was smart, funny, magnetic, and everyone knew him and loved him; He was like a young god; a teenage dream and prom king. I never understood why John the Second was so insistent on looking into my brown eyes all of the time until I knew John the Third’s brown eyes; Like melted honey poured into a hot cup of tea for my sore throat. I may have convinced myself that John the Third was the love of my life, but unfortunately John the Third made me realize how dangerous it can be to make someone your place of worship. John the Third broke up with me after three years together and even after, I was still at the altar. I don’t blame John the Third for the power he knew he had. Maybe I could’ve made some better decisions or maybe I was just between the ages of seventeen to nineteen.
I thought my love had died young, and of course I thought so at nineteen. But here’s the good news: your love can’t die. It’s like your body keeps it from dying, it just won’t let you lose it. If you’re going through a heartbreak right now and you’re trying to convince the world that you won’t be a fool again – well, I don’t know you, but I think you’re wrong, respectfully.
First, acknowledge that it happened. You can kick, you can scream, but you can’t go back. I know that hurt, but we’ve got to feel what we need to feel in order to move on. Don’t be ashamed of being hurt; it’s honestly kind of amazing, the ability we have to feel this way, right? We tend to rip out so much of ourselves in this process to make it go away, but ask yourself, would you rather feel nothing to not feel anything? It sounds counterproductive, but I think there’s a lot of beauty and joy in that pain, so don’t kill it. Don’t do yourself the injustice of killing your own love. That’s the process of grief, as grief is just love with nowhere to go.
You will get over it. Believe me, you will get over it. You will laugh for the first time again. You will hug your friends a little tighter to remind yourself of the love you still have. You’ll call your family to tell them about your day. Because the world did not end, and tomorrow the sun will rise like it always does, and you’ll have breakfast and all the love you need.