If you're one of the lucky ones, you'll meet someone who enters your life and makes you wonder how you ever managed to live as long as you have without them. All the sappy love songs you've tried so hard to avoid slowly start to make sense and you'll soon find yourself singing along to the same lyrics that once made your stomach drop. Your gray and dull world is suddenly exploding in vibrant, beautiful color. You had no idea someone so compatible and extraordinary even existed, never dreamed of it, but suddenly you're waking up every morning thanking your lucky stars that they do. This person brings so much peace and serenity to your life, the calm in your storm. You'll feel as if you can take on and conquer the world with one hand, as long as they are holding the other. You can't imagine any part of your future without them being by your side. But then, your entire world is stopped dead in its tracks and flipped upside down when you have to start.

When you lose someone or something you gave so much of yourself to, it's difficult to see yourself for who you are all on your own. Suddenly, any grounding you thought you had disappeared beneath you, and the world whips you around like a ragdoll while you're just trying to stand on your own two feet again. It's like they took with them every last piece of you that you gave, and now you're left alone to put the pieces back together. The worst part of losing this person is the looming thought in the back of your head that you'll never find anyone that could even come close to comparing.

People will come in and out of your life without necessarily serving a purpose, no connection, no bond, just coexistence in one another's life. The people that would come and go in my life after my long-term relationship had ended made me feel as if I would never connect with anyone again. I felt as if I had already experienced my 'one great love' and accepted I wouldn't ever find anything that would come close. The thing about me is, and as cheesy as this sounds, I love love. So to accept that I may never get to experience something so beautiful and powerful as the love I once had, really sent my mental health down a dark spiral. Who was I without someone to love? It was terrifying to find out, but here's what you don't know; there are so many people out there you haven't even met yet that are going to show you a love you've never experienced before.

It is absolutely terrifying when someone new comes along and tries to break down the walls you spent so long building to protect yourself from this happening again. We run from love and meaningful connections because it make us vulnerable, open, exposed, which is when we find ourselves getting hurt. We have this pre-determined thought in our head that no matter who it is, they're in our lives to bring havoc and heartbreak. It's okay to be nervous or scared, but it's not okay to deny yourself of something real because of what others have done in your past. If you want to move forward, you have to let go of the past. There is physically nothing you can do to change the past, so stop living there. You need to allow yourself to grow, to advance, to make mistakes and learn from them.

Nobody wants to give someone else the position and the power to hurt them. The people that really care will prove to you time and time again that they won't. You'll know the difference, give your energy and focus to what/who is doing the same for you. Water what waters you. Someone out there is looking for exactly what you are. Not everyone is in your life with ill intention, you have to believe that you are still worthy of love. It doesn't matter what you've done or been through, it doesn't matter how many people in your past have hurt you, everyone deserves to experience love and real happiness. These people and connections won't always be romantic, and that's okay. It will give you the opportunity to expose yourself to different types of love you may not have felt before. Don't shut yourself off to love just because it isn't romantic. When you start to believe that you are worthy and deserving, it begins to find you. If you're really lucky, I mean Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket lucky, someone else comes along when you least expect it, when you don't know you need them most. For me, this person met me in a very dark and different time in my life. I didn't see the point to anything, I didn't try, I was lost with no direction. I didn't have an interest in the things I once lived for anymore. They came into my life like a ray of sunshine breaking through the darkest storm cloud. I tried hard to keep my distance and push it away, but when someone really cares, you'll know. Before I knew it, I was putting my pieces back together in better shape than which they had broken in. I was excited to wake up in the morning again. I had a pep back in my step. I am happy to be alive and excited for what's to come. I did not think I would ever experience any of these feelings again, and I certainly did not expect them to happen as early as they did. I'm thankful. I'm lucky.

Heartbreak is extremely painful. It forces us to create this version of ourselves that's built behind walls higher than anyone could climb in an attempt to protect ourselves. There is a fine line between protecting and isolating. Are you protecting yourself or are you prohibiting yourself from an experience because your mind has already jumped to the worst-case scenario? Not everyone will come into your life with ill intentions.

One of the only things that we can count on in this life is the consistency of change. Things don't always work out the way we had originally planned for, and that's okay. Sometimes you think someone will be in your life for its entirety, and they are. That's beautiful. Other times, people are only in your life to serve their purpose and leave. That's beautiful too. Regardless of how painful it is when they do leave, you have to let them. You must let go and allow yourself to move forward.

The hardest pill I've had to swallow recently is that no matter how badly you want something to work out in a specific manner, or how badly you wish someone would feel a certain way, there are some instances you have absolutely no control over. You cannot waste your precious time and energy wishing for things that won't happen. You have got to believe that there is still good out there waiting for you and start living for yourself. No matter how dark and brutal your heartbreak may have been, this life is too short and too beautiful to be hung up on something that isn't hung up on you. Accept things and people for what they are, and stay moving forward. There is so much love out there in the world for you, you just have to believe you're deserving of it.