Love. Quite possibly one of the few things that no one can fully comprehend, but everyone tries to master. Like us human beings, it is complex, confusing, infatuating, addictive. The list can very well go on for pages among pages. But one thing for certain is that with love comes heartbreak, and the hard truth is that it is virtually inevitable.

As a nineteen-year-old college freshman, you can presume that I do not have much experience with love- and you would be right. But I am not here to write about ways to master the art of love, how to find it or to even (try) to explain it. Rather, I will simply tell you a little bit about my quite tragic love story (or, what I thought was, love) and the light at the end of everyone’s tunnel.

Unlike most love stories, this one is one sided, yet still tends to be very tragic (on my part only, of course). I had no intentions of falling for him, but that usually how it always is, huh? We could not be any polar opposites, yet we somehow connected with each other in an instant (opposites attract, I guess?). Within days he was my closest friend: someone I talked to day in and day out, someone I shared every bit of good and bad news with, someone who said I was something special to them and provided the actions to prove it.

Somewhere along the line that special feeling turned into something much stronger and a little bit scary. I was falling in love- or so I thought. Now some may think that we had everything going to start the perfect relationship, but he was in love with someone else. Guess I forgot to mention that big piece of heart crushing information.

I am not the person to put my feelings out there so naturally I just sucked it up, kept it to myself, and did whatever I could to help make him happy (a.k.a. I helped him get with the girl he loved). Then, fast forward a bit to the night I said screw it and told him how I felt. He response was, of course, the complete opposite of what I had daydreamed about, but was the response I intended on receiving.

From that day on, our friendship faded. I was absolutely heartbroken. And it hurt. Seeing him after that day hurt, and I did not know how to deal with the pain, so I turned it on myself. I was unhappy for weeks, and those are days and missed experiences I, and you, can never get back. In the grand scheme of things you truly do have to fake it until you make it; push yourself to ignore the feelings until, one day, you simply do not feel them anymore. It will be hard and it will be long, but please trust me when I say that it will most certainly be worth it. Because looking back on the memories that your friends will have had without you in them will hurt much more in the long run.

Being in love with someone who is a mere friend to you, in their eyes, flat out sucks. But it’s okay, because, despite the pain you will endure, you will outgrow it. I think that is one of the absolute given facts about love, is that it is- like a piece of clothing- outgrow-able. That fact is one of the comforting things about love, and about heartbreak, that no one should ever forget.

Go out there and experience love with all its good and bad things to offer. Love is forever, but the bad feelings that go along with it are not, so just say screw it and have fun with it while you can. It will be worth it.