What To Do When They Break Your Heart

When they break your heart, delete your text conversation and throw your phone on the other side of your bed, just out of reach. No more assessing the meaning between the phrases. No more overanalyzing their final goodbye.

Despite this, think about texting them again and starting a whole new thread all about calling them out for their bullshit. How they never cared for you. How very pissed you are that they wasted your time. And, no, you don’t want to be friends. You have enough of those. Screw you.

Instead, fall asleep at 2 AM to the sound of your ceiling fan and the screaming fear that you are really deeply alone. For good this time. Find yourself awake again at quarter to six, your hand laying slightly over on their side of the bed. Leave it there and pretend it’s their body you’re resting it on.

Drag your feet to work, force yourself to smile at your favorite coworker, and pretend you’re engaged by the 18 tabs you have open. Read none of them. Tweet some petty shit that you’ll later delete and cry as you sit in rush hour traffic to “Wild Horses.” Decide you don’t care that your mascara is running and everyone passing can see you are falling apart. What the hell is pride, anyway?

Make this your routine for a few weeks. Rinse and repeat until you’re so sick of the misery that you decide you’re going to reinvent yourself and your entire life.

Start to believe that their leaving was the launching pad to which you begin again. Find that you might actually be on to something. That you might be right for once.

Take this new lease on life and start finding ways to live in a way that feels authentic. Like you. Write in a voice that sounds like your own and listen to “Wild Horses” without wanting to run your car off the road. (At least most days.)

Start caring deeply for yourself and your well-being. Question your inner monologue and rewrite your narrative. Replace toxic behaviors with ones that actually serve you. Stop betraying your own word and commit to yourself. To your life. To your future. Look in the mirror and see someone who is full of potential that has yet to be tapped. Be excited about what is to come.

And be sure to forgive the person who broke your heart along the way, too. Begin to see what you had with them was necessary to be where you are now. Because it’s not about what knocks you down; it’s about how you pick yourself back up.