Sometimes you need to pour a bit of your heart out into words, because it’s too full to hold inside your chest. This is one of those times. I’m not trying to burden the world with another story about the end of a relationship, but this is a part of my story, and as a writer, expressing that pain through words is a part of how I heal.

As I grew up, I went through the pain that's guaranteed with childhood. I remember falling down a lot as a toddler, skinning my knees and bruising my elbows as a youngster. I remember feeling misunderstood and confused as a teen, and experiencing friendship drama... all of these hurt a lot. But they just can't compare to the feeling of my heart shattering.

I don’t remember when I fell in love with David. I love Hazel’s idea, from "The Fault in our Stars", about falling in love slowly, and then all at once; I like to think I fell that way. The first time I saw David, I almost ran him over with my car. I was trying to find parking at The Urban Bean for our date. The last time I saw David, I wished I had run him over. But I also wished that I had never met him, that I hadn’t fought with him so much, and that we could work things out, all at once. David and I had a ton of good and bad memories, but what happened between when we first met and when we finally split up doesn’t matter. What matters is the present moment, and the reality of it is that we both fell again -- out of love.

In the earlier times of my life, I didn’t know that the biggest pain had yet to come. And now here it is, and I’m wallowing in it. I wasn’t told how to prepare for it or how to build up enough walls that it didn’t get to me. No one who had experienced it warned me to stay away from it. Unbeknownst to my younger self, I would eventually have to pass through this guaranteed adulthood pain -- and I would have to do it all on my own, without training wheels or a nap.

My mom had foretold this time years ago: she said to me, “The one thing I wish I could save you from, Shelbs, is heartbreak. Gosh, it hurts.” Yeah, Mom, I know. But I also wish, beyond watching our relationship fail, and losing the person I loved, that I wasn’t so bitter and sour about being alone. I wish I could better appreciate what this pain is going to teach me. How am I going to learn from heartbreak when I don’t want to accept what caused it?

I wasn’t the one who pushed my partner away or neglected our relationship; I was the one who got slowly broken up with. I wanted to stay and work on the relationship we had; I don’t give up when I really want something. But, I lost myself when I learned that I would never be able to get what I wanted, and David lost interest. Being heartbroken over a relationship that you wanted to stay in is painful. I often wish to return to the happy moments I shared with him, which makes me miss him, which reminds me that I can’t be with him, which makes me cry. I've cried a lot.

From my break-up, I believe that you don't learn as much about yourself as you do about the process of acceptance. I have to come to terms with what things were and for what things are now. I'm learning to go on about my days on my own without him. It sucks that I have nobody to hold my hand at the movies, or to plan out my summer with, but it’s he who didn’t want to share these moments anymore, not me. This acceptance of his decision is the way to move through the pain. On my own, my heart is broken, but on my own, I will learn how to put the pieces back together.