Hurt. What a tough word. No one likes to hear it, and no one likes to say it. No one wants to experience it, and no one wants to do it to someone else. No one wants to acknowledge that they’ve felt it. No one wants to acknowledge it’s there.

Take it from me: I've felt some deep hurt in my lifetime. I've been stabbed in the back, had my heart broken, lost numerous friendships, and broke myself down at times. It is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. Hurt is the hardest thing to bounce back from, but once you have it is like a huge weight lifted off your shoulders.

Regardless, everyone has experienced it. It’s the worst feeling in the world. It’s a stabbing feeling in the gut. It’s that pain in your heart that has followed you around all week. You look out into a sea of problems and you feel as if there will never be a time where solutions are at bay.

Fortunately for you though there is a way to move forward from hurt. The remedy for this terrible condition is love. Yes, love may be the reason you’re hurting in the first place but think of all the times love made you feel like you were flying. Now, I personally have never been in love but I have had the experience of truly liking a person for everything they had. I’d imagine being in love is a great thing, and I’m looking forward to feeling that way.

But love isn't the only way to move on. There are also talents and passions to distract. Why do people play guitar at 3 o'clock in the morning? It could be for inspiration or it could be for suffering. There are so many ways to practice healthy responses to hurt like taking up an instrument, learning to paint, or singing your heart out in the shower.

So when your hurting, think of all the things you love: family, friends, college, your job, pizza?

Because time can only tell when you’ll be okay. Yes you’ll want nothing more than to be okay and experience that immediate relief, but life doesn’t work that way. If you think about it, the best things happen during that journey to becoming okay. You discover more about what you deserve and who your real friends are. You discover what you’re willing to give up for people and what you’re not.

So that journey back to happiness will be a long one and a tough one, but it will definitely be the most rewarding one of all. This builds you up into a stronger, better person. The next time hurt comes around, we'll be more prepared and mature to handle whatever life may throw at us. "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger."