To the Girl With the Broken Heart

I've been seeing a lot of posts lately from ladies who have just recently gotten out of relationships. I see the heartbreak, and I see the recollections of past hurts as well as good memories from the last relationship. For all you girls out there with a broken heart, this one's for you.
(And as a disclaimer, I'm not here to bash guys and exes. I'm here to help mend, not make things worse.)

I've been where you are. Most girls have, and there are the lucky few that haven't. And we all hear the same message from those around us after a tough breakup- "You'll find someone better." and "It just takes time, you'll be okay." The thing is, we hear it- but that's not what we want to hear. We want that guy to come back and tell us he made a mistake. That he wants us back and that he'll try even harder than before to be the best guy he can be for us. We want to talk to them again. The other half of the time, we're furious. Sometime's we're crazy furious. We go through phases of trying to ignore him and act like we're fine without them but get caught up in past feelings and want to text him. Other times if something remotely wrong goes wrong in his life it gives us a comforting sense of revenge, because he doesn't have us anymore to comfort him, and he "probably deserved it". We find a weird sense of joy if he gets rejected by another girl, because he won't ever find someone who loves him like we do. It's a weird, crazy form of grieving us girls go through after a break up. 

In my experience, my breakup was the worst heartbreak I'd ever experienced. And in a world that taboos mental illness, I'll say that many times a girl can go through depression/anxiety on a spectrum after a hard breakup. For me, I certainly did. I was depressed because I was certain that the guy I was with I was going to marry, and it put me in a place to where I believed I wasn't going to find anyone else. I was anxious because I feared seeing him again, I feared losing him completely, I feared seeing him with someone else, and I feared so many other things. And I still do. It doesn't make you weak, and you most certainly are not alone. It's easy to feel alone after a break up, and even when you're around your friends and family your mind can make you feel like they're not even there. 

If you're dealing with depression/anxiety after a break up, here's my advice. Let yourself feel your emotions, let yourself cry, let yourself scream, let yourself vent with the person you is there to comfort you. You need that. BUT. If your depression/anxiety gets to a point to where you are a threat to yourself or others, you NEED to tell someone. Please do not take that lightly. You have people in your life you care SO much about you, and don't let a break up, even the worst one, ruin your life or the people around you. And if you are one of the girls that hasn't had to battle mental illness, even after a heart break, consider yourself blessed.

I know most of the time I believed that I would never get over that guy. I loved him unconditionally. What I can tell you honestly, is that if you TRULY love someone unconditionally, it will never just go away. What happens is that over time as your heart heals, you develop a sense of peace. You know you'll always love them, and if it turns out you never end up with them or it's just not the right time, you accept it. However, I find that many people falsely identify love. Love is more than just a feeling. Unconditional means that literally no matter what, even if they do the worst thing you can think of to you, you still love them after that. It doesn't mean there won't be anger or lack of forgiveness for a while, but you will still love them. It isn't perfect love, because only God holds that. But I urge you for your own sake to ask yourself if you truly loved this person, because it can help you move on. And if it wasn't unconditional love, I know that it doesn't make the break up any easier. But the acknowledgement of it can help you move forward and look forward to what is to come.

Another piece of advice I can give you it to beware of self-pity. Of course it's normal to feel bad for yourself and to tell yourself that you don't deserve this. It's healthy at the right levels. But too much of it can be toxic. It can turn into hatred and anger towards other people, and make you very attention seeking. It can lead you to make bad decisions. It can lead you to seek attention from other guys. That is not going to help you heal. Myself as well as other girls have unfortunately had to learn the hard way, and maybe that's something you have to discover on your own. But with me telling you, hopefully you can identify it in yourself.

Lastly, look at the possibilities. If you truly believe in your heart you were meant to be with that person forever, it doesn't hurt to keep that in the back of your mind, but don't expect it. For me, I've accepted that if it's meant to be then it just wasn't the right timing, and that there's a lot of growth that needs to happen before it really works out. But I've also accepted that I may be wrong, and that God has someone different planned for me that is greater than I could've ever imagined. And I'm impatient so that's hard to accept all the time, but it is something that I try to constantly remind myself of. 

Most of us just want answers, and sometimes we get them. But in the times we don't, we hope and trust that God has something great planned for us, whether it's with the guy we thought we'd spend forever with and be 100x happier than the last time, or someone else that makes us 100x happier than we thought we'd be. The classic line, "Time heals" is true, but sometimes it takes us longer than others to do so. So stay strong, cry if you need to, and come out stronger from it. <3

I hope that this post makes sense and that it can help at least one of you. If any of you ever need anyone to talk to or need anything at all, don't hesitate to contact me. Us girls are here for each other. Love you guys <3