Heartbreak in the First Semester
Many of us know that horrible feeling when a message pops up on our phone reading something along the lines of, “We need to talk.” Your heart quite literally beats faster, stomach drops and panic ensues. Often, the conversation that comes after is even more agonizing.
My best friend and I both received similar messages in the past few weeks, and my world as I know it has been rocked. Since 7th grade, this significant other has been my best friend. He has been there for me through every up and down: when I accidentally poisoned my dog with gum and thought he was going to die, losing my best friend in middle school, my struggle with self esteem and accepting myself, my mom living in a different state for two years--through all the changes, he was a constant. And yes, we have had our fair share of ups and downs. Yet through every bump in the road, we’ve always overcome it and I have held steadfast the belief that we could overcome everything. But this feels different.
Suddenly, we are not forced to run into each other every day, or work on class projects together and we no longer are surrounded by a huge group of mutual friends. Coming to college, I already felt like I had to start navigating the world alone, but now I feel more lonely than ever. I’ve come to realize over the past few weeks that heartbreak isn’t as lonely as it feels because it happens to everyone. It’s what we do with it that shows the world who we are. I have spent my first months at college holed up in my room missing a boy. I am now making some decisions for myself, and I’m determined that this shift in mindset will make all the difference.
Go out and do things and stop thinking about what they’re doing and if they care about you anymore. I assure you, they do. Just maybe not enough.
Let yourself be sad, but don’t lie in your bed going through playlists to make yourself cry.
Surround yourself with people and facetime friends from home. A person who values you enough would not put themselves in the position to lose you. You are worth more than a checkbox at the end of a to do list, you should be a top priority. You should never have to beg for attention that should be given willingly. You are so much more than that, and accepting anything less is crazy, crazy, crazy.
Maybe this boy and I will come back to each other, in a year or ten or 20. Or maybe I will one day understand why this all happened and I feel like six years of my life was yanked away from me over a few text messages. Heartbreak, in my experience, is an emptying feeling that you sense throughout your whole body. But, everything that happens to us in our lives leads to something else. I am extremely excited to see where my journey will take me.
We live in a culture where we excuse these things because we think it is better to be loved a little than not at all. It is not. Sometimes we have to let go of the things, or people, that mean the most to us in life in order to recognize our own self worth and who we are without them. Throughout this major change in my life, I have realized that to come across true happiness in life and in love, you must endure sadness, and once you do you will be able to appreciate the good times so much more.