Heartbreak.

It’s that gut-wrenching, stabbing, so-real-you-can-feel-it kind of pain. It’s life-shattering and life-altering. It empties you, robs you, and consumes you. Sometimes it’s slow, but other times it’s like jumping into ice water: the pain is immediate and breathtaking. But somehow, someday, you will be better because of it.

Heartbreak.

It should be a dirty word. And like most dirty words it is inevitable that you will use it at some point in your life. It is classified as a noun, but it should be a verb. It’s an action, and when it happens you can physically feel your heart break. When it’s done you’re left with scars and little fragments of yourself all over the floor. And it’s up to you to put them back together, because that sinking feeling in your chest means that he’s gone; he’s probably not coming back.

When you think you won’t love again remember...

These next few months are your wallowing period. Keep your guard up, so you can keep yourself safe. Invest in yourself, you can; he didn’t, but you should. Little by little you will start to feel your heart piece itself back together. And I’m going to tell you that it won’t come from another person. It will come from yourself, and good books, and warm cups of tea, and lots of ice cream. It will come from laughing, crying, and even getting angry.

When you think you won’t love again remember...

Someday you will find someone else. And you will love again, but in a different way. You will love them a little more cautiously, but you will also love them a little harder. You’ll hold onto them because you know you might lose them. You won’t make the same mistakes because you learned; you learned to love differently. You will love smarter, and bolder, and more realistically because you have learned. Your heart will always beat a little irregularly, because he will always have a small piece of you.

Embrace your tattered little heart, it's living, beating, proof that you loved. And you loved hard.