Some of us may have experienced falling in love in various ways. We found happiness and we learned heartbreak. As people, some things are certain. We are prone to make mistakes. We are bound to meet new people and fall in love. When we get hurt is often when we don't understand the person who hurt us, or why bad things happen in the worst of times. I don't have all the answers, but maybe I can provide you a little perspective as to how I have faced these challenges.

It is within our nature that we will hurt others and be hurt, in turn. Your personal understanding of what love is depends on your personal experience of being loved or feeling love. I have been in love and I have been loved, and I have been hurt, but those experiences helped me better understand people. Love is one of the best feelings in the world, perhaps because we can shut out everything else and simply focus on the euphoria these feelings bring us.

It's easy to see the reward these feelings can bring us, but some of us get hurt from them. We trust in someone, we spend more than enough time with them, we open our hearts to them, we become vulnerable and show our weaknesses for them, only to have something happen that is out of our control. After having sacrificed so much, sometimes even our self-worth, for someone who only ended up betraying us, it can be difficult to comprehend our own actions. You might ask yourself, why do I deserve the pain when I gave my heart to the another person? Why do I have to feel alone, like no one will ever love me again? The painful and horrible aches that follow are hard to recover from and can be impossible to comprehend.

Let me offer a little insight. Yes, you may have experienced these feelings and shared these thoughts, but what do you do? Time is always by my side, and I have discovered that in some cases it takes a lot of time to heal and mend your wounds, but you will heal and become stronger. Sometimes you won't get the answers you want or deserve because that is just the way life is. Don't evaluate the situation too much because it will only make the pain worse. It is in our nature to be scared, and when we get scared we run because that is the only thing we know to do to avoid exploring the complexities of our own emotions. Our nature tells us to avoid complex situations because we do not want to have to hurt in order to find the solution. If the situation risks unfamiliar feelings, fears, or worrying about the future, then we avoid it. So don't get caught up in the chaos of the situation, or play hypothetical scenarios out in your head. Those things did not happen, and they probably never will. You will grow stronger because you deserve better.

I believe that everything happens for a reason, so have faith and know that your life has already been written and there is something and someone greater out there waiting for you, but you have to wait. You have to be patient. Remember that you are more like the person who hurt you than you may like to believe. After all, you, too, have hurt someone, maybe without even knowing it. It is within our nature to hurt and be hurt because as humans we make mistakes, and when we make mistakes we don't know how to fix them so we run. Maybe, without your knowledge, the person who hurt you realized too late that they made a mistake, and when they didn't know how to fix it, they ran. It may seem selfish, but they are trying to protect themselves just like you would.

Remember this: time is your friend and you have to trust it. We must understand that whether we are hurt by a friend, a partner, a family member, or even a role-model, we need to forgive and move on. Forgiveness if the first step to moving forward, and chances are that you need to forgive yourself, too, for letting yourself become so vulnerable that you let your guard down. So heads up, my friends, because the sun will always rise tomorrow, and with tomorrow comes new opportunities. So no matter who hurt you or why they did it, with or without reason, take time to mend your broken heart and find your own happiness to heal. Learn to trust in yourself. One day, you will find someone out there who will love you and treat you better than you treat yourself; then you'll understand why you had to be hurt in order to love.