On love and loss.

Recently I was asked the best way to heal a broken heart.

Look, there's no easy way to tell you this, but there is no best way. One of the last times my heart was broken, I cried in my bed for days, almost like it was an obligation I had. Curled up in the corner of a thin mattress, hidden from my roommate in the bottom bunk of our dorm room, I wept for hours at a time. I cried until I felt like I would crack, until my cheeks chafed from the tears that ran over them. I pushed my friends away, I didn't eat, I didn't go to class. I felt like I had lost everything, that I had been snatched up and away from my home and forced to learn to exist on an alien planet where we couldn't love each other anymore.

It took months before I could say his name without feeling a flare of hurt inside of me, and it tooks years before I could honestly wish him well and hope that his life was alright without me in it (before that, I wanted him to hurt as deeply as I did). It's been similar with each boy that has broken my heart.

You cry. You rage. You throw the biggest pity party of your life. You eat what feels like your weight in icecream and you drown yourself in margaritas or shots (or hot chocolate if you're like me circa winter of 2007). You talk about all the shitty things he did to you and you call him names. You get pissed off when your friends start calling him names (because they didn't really know him at all and WHY ARE YOU DEFENSIVE OF THIS GUY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU). You stop listening to your favorite songs because they remind you of that one night you kissed. You miss the feel of his hands on you. You get angry at yourself for missing the feel of his hands on you. You wake up in tears and wonder how your brain could possibly still remember the exact feel of his hands on you.

You dream about him. You have dreams where you relive the end of your relationship. There are dreams where he dies and you are happy. There are dreams where he dies and you are devastated. There are dreams of the future you could've had, with blurry faces of children you can't remember the names of.

You spend every minute reliving every moment that you'd spent together, wondering where you'd gone wrong and what you could've done differently to save you, to save him, to save the collective You that the both of you had combined to be.

The worst part is the loneliness. You have to still your hand every time you reach for your phone. There is no texting, no phone calls, no Twitter replies or e-mails. It is too soon, and you know it, but that doesn't keep you from feeling that pull back to him, the inexorable force the leaves you scraping your nails in the dirt as you try to keep yourself from being dragged back to him. Suddenly, you feel the complete absence of touch from your life, and you wonder if you'll ever feel warm arms wrapped around your body again, or long fingers intertwined with yours, or the pressure of someone's leg against your own. You feel like you are encased in a bubble and you can hardly breathe, thoroughly separated from everyone you love and thinking that any minute you will suffocate and that will be it.

Nobody ever knows how long it lasts. Some people are still feeling the ache years down the line. Some never recover, and have to adjust to their new life as someone who is convinced they are damaged or broken or less than they were before love died in their hearts.

But some of us will find ourselves in a quiet moment, and we are startled with the knowledge that we are fine. We are strong and capable and we will love again, and suddenly we can listen to those damned songs again without tearing up, and we find the strength to put down that bowl of icecream we'd been using to fill the hole inside of us. We remember how to laugh and we understand that we no longer need to push people away and we're able to go out and have fun without feeling bitterness and resentment building in our chests. There is no more fear of being alone, and we realize that we like ourselves and that maybe we are better off without him, and we're able to really remember all the reasons we wouldn't have worked anyway. The calm of this fills us.

And maybe someday, we'll find ourselves in love again. And maybe that love will go up in another burst of phoenix flames, but even if it does we know we can pull ourselves from the ashes of its demise and start again. Love and loss, love and loss. That is what life is filled with. This is what we know.

And if, someday, we find ourselves locked into a relationship with someone that fills us so perfectly, that we could live without but choose not to, someone that we want to share the rest of our lives with -- and it turns out that they want us, too -- then all the better, because we can compare this new, thriving love with the one that wilted and stung us.

I'm a firm believer in learning from your past mistakes, and that every relationship that ends is making way for a better one in your future, and that anyone who would leave you doesn't deserve you, and that we are all great people existing on different planes and not everyone will be on the same level as you. I'm a firm believer in being okay by yourself first, and that people can tell when you are desperate for companionship because you are afraid of being alone and they will take advantage of that.

I know that Real Love exists, and I have concrete examples in my life of people who have amazing relationships that fill me with envy for how well these two individuals work together. But I know that to settle for something less than what will make us happy, to tie ourselves to somebody that will not encourage the best from us, is a discredit to not only ourselves but to them. And I'd rather be alone and learning more about my own life than stuck in a relationship with someone that does not (or cannot) understand me, give me what I need, and make me want good things for them in return.

TL;DR, sorry.