It lasts forever and then it's over

Sometimes, love is a hand waving at me through the window of a moving train, fleeting in its passage. Sometimes it’s the wind on my back as I run along the river, propelling my legs faster as I lose the breath from my lungs. A lot of the times, it’s the warmth underneath my blanket on a cold winter night, the snow falling steadily outside my bedroom window. Love is always the first time I make eye contact with my best friend after months apart and the reciprocated smile from a stranger on the subway. I see love in everything, yet I still do not know how to fully let it back in. I can feel it knocking on the doors, thumping in tandem with my beating heart. Every day, it gets louder; my heart races. 

I resent the notion of finding my other half. Am I not whole already? Why do I need someone else to complete me when I have all the music and books and art in the world to fill that void? If you can not be completely fulfilled and independently comfortable with yourself as a being, then you will not find that satisfaction through someone else. But that is not to say you should not open yourself up to new people and to new experiences. If you had asked the girl I was one year ago, you would have been met with a heart guarded by thick iron walls, the cracks in it filled by the delusion that vulnerability is a weakness. I do not blame her; to feel emotions displaces you, but to bare witnesses to your feelings strips you down to your most raw self, a state of being that makes you feel defenseless. No, I could never blame this version of me who was so fearful of ever letting anyone claw their way back in between the spaces of her ribs.

I have consistently moved through life with my guard up, my shoulders pulled up to my ears, never letting anyone get within an arm’s length of me, metaphorically speaking. Not in all instances, though. For my friends and family, I welcome them with open arms, letting them nestle next to my lungs and in the crook of my neck. They are the exception. Or at least, they were. When it comes to love, I contradict myself. I am a hypocrite. I want to be loved with abandon, loved because I simply am. But I also want to be loved because of my wit and my passion and my beauty and x y and z. I want to be loved like I deserve it, yet I am simultaneously horrified by that thought. What if I stop deserving it, somewhere down the line? Unequivocal love is degrading, but conditional love is terrifying. Can both exist at the same time? 

I have never known what to do with residual love. I have never known what to do when good things fall apart, when the happy memories start to fester and the laughter rots in the back of my throat. I begin to choke on the maggots of I love you’s and this harsh crack inside my chest feels like I never want to open myself up to anyone new again. When you experience a pain that overwhelming, a hurt that consumes your life, it leaves a scar, a big enough impression that makes you never want to be susceptible to those feelings again. Learning how to fall out of love can harden you if you let it. It opens that door for you to become jaded to all the love you have yet to experience. I caution you, do not walk through that door. Despite the agony you have gone through, the knives people have dug into your spine and the hands that have squeezed every ounce of affection out of you, refuse to walk through that door. Because that’s the thing about grief and heartbreak; it lasts forever and then it’s over. 

I remember the feeling of heartbreak like the back of my hand. It will always linger in the back of my mouth. It tastes bittersweet. I used to believe that this was a reminder to never let anyone have the breadth to hurt me again, but I now realize it is telling me the opposite. Vulnerability is not a shortcoming; it is what will make me stronger in the end. I have never grown as much as I have than when I experienced such immense suffering. I would not be the person I am today, completely whole, without the torment of heartbreak. Why do we fault the victim of hurt when it was clearly the actions of the person who wields the weapon that inflicted pain? We are told to not put ourselves in a position where we are exposed, but we never chastise those who cause the grief. Avoiding connection and tenderness is not the way to go through life. It is not easy to close yourself off to love, but you will never learn the lessons you need to learn with your haunches up and fists clenched. Do not bite at the hand that is merely trying to pet you. I am still learning. My teeth are still sharp, but I do not bare them as often as I used to. 

Do not ask me who I am. Ask me who I was, ask me how I became the person I am today. There is no way of fully understanding who I am today without getting to know the girl I used to be. Once you get to know the wounds in the places you can not see, the scars that will not fully heal, the yearning that suffocates underneath layers of anger and grief, then will you have a chance of seeing who I am today. But I caution you; memory lane is not an easy path to walk down. 

How long will it take? You ask me.

It lasts forever, and then it’s over.