In a moment of weakness, but also a moment of empowerment, it felt right to get rid of any trace of him…his deep brown eyes, his romantic poetry, and every picture of him smiling. But seconds later, it felt wrong. I asked myself, “Renee, why are you trying to throw away all of the good times in your life that you felt the happiest?” I took a deep breath and I reminded myself that I was doing the right thing. I told myself that it takes true strength to slowly dust off the memory of someone from my mind, to dust off the way they touched my heart, and to dust off all the things I loved about that person.
I woke up the very next day with a knot in my stomach as if I drank a love potion that burned away all of my feelings as if it could boil the organs keeping me alive. I remember my heavy breathing from that day, just as clearly as I remember my body shaking. After my body’s rush of anxiety, I simply stared blankly at the lonely walls of my room, in search of some escape. I was in need of answers as to why things end, and why we aren’t allowed to know the answers.
Day after day, I allowed myself to feel lonely and lost in my own world of silence. I disconnected myself from everything around me, thinking this would be the cure. I abandoned friendships and avoided eye contact that led to small talk with people who couldn’t care to remember my name. Now, it was seven days later, filled with silence, without him. It was seven days later in the same bedsheets and same tears, for the one person that saved me from the world but somehow also managed to break me. That shivering seventh night, my fingers trembled and my teeth chattered. I blew on my fingers for warmth; gently reaching for my phone, knowing that I probably wouldn’t find what I was looking for, but my heart was in desperate need to find any proof that I was loved; that at one point we were happy.
I spent hours that night, searching for something in hopes that my heartache would get better as if hurting over someone’s absence could easily be extracted from my system. Suddenly, I came across a voicemail. It was the three a.m. I love you’s that he said on repeat, it was his voice that never failed to tug at my heartstrings, it was the “I want to get as close as possible to forever with you,” that now seemed like bitter lies that I so badly wanted to hold onto. But, I knew I couldn’t. I couldn’t hold onto those words because they were a sign of the past; what good would I be doing myself by trusting something that was proven wrong several times?
Looking back at that moment in my life, I can still recall every ounce of pain I felt each day that passed without us talking. Seven days turned into fourteen days, and days to weeks, and weeks to months. I can still hear the whispering voices of people in the school hallways saying, “Is she really going through something that serious? She looks like a mess.” But one-day, my best friend Shania called me and told me that I didn’t have to say anything, I just had to listen to her speak. She told me, “It’s in our darkest times that we feel the most vulnerable, it’s vulnerable times that we rise into stronger and wiser people.” I have memorized those words, because it wasn’t until someone finally decided to talk to me, no matter how many times I pushed them away, that I finally realized the truth.
I now realize that I had to go through that heartbreak because, without it, I wouldn’t have experienced all the different kinds of emotions I felt. I wouldn’t know that when you’re young and hurting over someone, it can make you feel invisible; it can make you feel like you don’t belong in the world, or that you’re somehow not normal. But it’s okay, because loving and losing someone is just another one of life’s beautiful lessons, and it’s only meant to make you a better version of yourself.