We hurt, We Learn, We grow

Ten years ago I had a totally different idea/ conception of love. I guess because I was young and resilient or maybe because my heart hadn’t been through the wears and tears of time OR maybe because it hadn’t been dragged through the mud yet. I used to dream of that wild love. The one that leaves you drunk and drives you completely crazy, the one that just hits your brain and your heart in a split second and that you can’t get enough of. I know... It was a very naïve conception of love but I was a pretty young thing and I didn’t know better. But I learned. I learned through the lonely nights, the nights where I couldn’t sleep because I was wondering who he was with; the lonely nights where I would cry myself to sleep, wondering how he could put me through so much shit and go to sleep as if nothing happened. I learned through the lonely nights where the only thing that seemed to mend my heart was praying and writing my pain and heartbreak away because really I didn’t know what else to do. I would try to speak and words would just be stuck to the back of my throat. I would try to breathe and it would feel like I was drowning in my sorrows and my tears. I would try to eat but I couldn’t: it seemed like all the butterfly that were flying in my stomach every time he would smile to me and tell me he loved me had just died. My stomach was a funeral home: dead butterfly all over the place. My heart was broken, my soul was a wreck and my life (along with my hair) was a mess.


I hurt. I ached. But I learned. I learned that after being drunk in love comes the hangover and it is never a pretty sight nor is it a good feeling. I have learned that love is like a drug: getting high feel exhilarating at first but the aftermath is chaos and darkness. I wish somebody had told me about the violence of the crash. I wish somebody had told me : "baby take a parachute just in case. Just in case you go too high. Just in case you fall from up there, we don’t want to see you die". I wish somebody had explain to my why we say "fall in love", I wish someone had told me that the crash could be as unpredictable and violent as a tornado wrecking havoc everything crossing its path. I wish somebody had warned me about the fall, the one that shattered my heart and my soul in the process.


But even then I grew and I learned. I learned that a broken heart lets in the light and that at some point the light replaces the darkness. I learned that for a while you cry yourself to sleep and one morning, you wake up and all of the sudden something has settled in your heart. You can smile and laugh again. You can be yourself and alive; striving and kicking when a few years, months, days ago you were barely living, sitting on the edge of reason, only surviving. You open your eyes one day and despair has given its sits to hope. You think about love and you don’t get angry anymore. You think :" Perhaps one day I’ll be able to love again" instead of disappearing into a puddle of tears and acting like a lunatic. All of the sudden, you are on the other side of the storm. You don’t know how you made it through but you just know you’re on the other side because you can finally look back and not be sad. Or bitter. Or hurt. You’re finally at peace and you won’t let the past nibs its way through your newly found heaven.


Love was never easy to begin with. It is one of those things we gamble with, betting our hearts out of sheer madness, hoping and praying that things will work out. Love is one of those crazy things that we can’t live without. It’s one of those things that can freeze your heart or set your soul on fire.
To each one its own hell and may the odds be ever in our favor as we attempt to turn hell into paradise.

 

- Excerpt from a memoir I will never write #4