People won’t tell you that the happiest points of your life can be found in the moments where your head falls into your open palms. The moments you clutch your knees to your chest and allow yourself to fall to pieces. The moments where you ugly cry until you have to wipe all the snot and tears away on your tee shirt. People won't tell you the best moments in your life are the moments, where you lose someone you thought could be your entire world. But these moments are.

These moments, where it feels like the entirety of everything you know is lost, these are the moments that you are truly, undoubtedly, and wonderfully are human. These moments where you question if you can ever heal, if you will ever feel normal or alive again. These moments when you lose someone and love feels decayed in the empty spaces between your fingers. These moments where you feel foolish and ashamed of your efforts. These are the moments that will be honest.

You might not realize it then. It might take you months, or even take you years, but these moments allowed you to be viable. That having your heartbroken is the greatest gift you will ever receive. It is easy to be happy and love someone when the sun is basking on their perfect smile. It is easy to be joyful after a night spent in their arms. But that’s when love isn’t truthful, it’s blindsided by the temporary merriment of these brief fleeting encounters.

Love is in the moments where your heart is breaking. It resides in the compassion of understanding another's faults. Love is in the arguments that cause doors to slam and hurtful words of defensive nature to spill out in hateful corruption. Love is in the aftermath, the parts where you say I’m sorry by remembering how much sugar they put in their coffee. It's in the moments where the glass ceiling is shattered, but the broken fragments still reflect the luminosity that is their perfection. Love is in the moments where it hurts to breath, and you have so much to say but no way of spelling it all out. Love is the ongoing verb incapable of possessing a past tense.

The truth is, we will never know just how much we care about someone until it turns ugly. Until we choose if it’s worth the effort, time, and pain of putting the pieces back together. If it’s worth setting aside differences and chances with other people. If it’s worth laying down the facade, if it’s worth the blisters on your shoulders from carrying around another person’s weight.

You won’t realize it until you’ve lost something, just how much it hurts. And just how wonderful that is, because being able to feel such decomposing pain is proof you were able to love someone beyond the capacity in which you thought possible. Feeling this pain is proof you are not only human, but you are beautiful.

It’s easy to remember this when you’re fluidly content in the arms of someone. But it’s important to remember them in the times of desperation. When you’re driving on the highway, tears rolling down your face as you remember the sound of their laughter. When you decide it's enough, when you decide it wasn't. Don’t be angry when the hurt streams from your eyes, from your fingers, from the sleeplessness of night. Remind yourself, that you were able to love someone so much, you allowed it to bring you pain. Not everyone is lucky enough to have their heart broken, and it only really happens maybe once or twice in our lifetimes. So please don’t brush it aside when it happens, because while you might not see it in the moment. This is the most beautiful thing, that you will ever feel.