15 Lessons I Learned Because You Broke My Heart

I went through ups and downs with friends as I have grown into the person I was always meant to be. But I am so lucky to have settled in with a wonderful group that has been there for me through every meltdown, every tear, and every time I punched the steering wheel so hard I bled. I always knew my friends were wonderful, but their picking me up when I was this down made me realize how lucky I truly am.

When you love someone, you tend to overlook that little thing called instinct. For a long time in my last relationship, I listened to it and it kept me in check. However, things changed, and once I realized I was in love, I made the decision to give my heart fully. While I admit I was never so happy in my life, exactly what my gut was telling me would happen actually happened.

I gave myself a bit of a hard time for not moving on right away. It took me a few months to even feel like myself again. An advocate of therapy, I stopped in to see my therapist after I realized that it was taking me a bit too long to get out of the lows. She explained to me that I was actually grieving — it's not just for actual death, it's for loss, period. After that, we were able to pinpoint what part of the cycle I was on and what to expect.

She also reminded me to be gentle with myself. Everyone moves on in their own time, and the amount of time we spent together (which was a decent amount of time) is not necessarily correlative with the strength of the feelings. I needed to give myself a break.

Every experience shapes you in some way, but a tough breakup is one of those things that will have an impact on a lot of facets of your life. This can be both positive or negative depending on what you took from it and your reaction.

For me personally, a positive is that I know the type of love I need and I deserve now. The negative? I will be more emotionally stunted than I already am. It took me more than a year to tell my ex that I loved him (I felt it earlier, but the words didn't come because I was afraid), and I only told him after I felt that we were going to move forward together. We didn't. So now that leaves me in a more careful position. I will hold on to my heart a lot longer in the future.

I hit major lows during this breakup. But I woke up every day, and I did what I had to do to kick ass at work, at the gym, at family events — I just did it. And then something amazing happened — I woke up one day and felt like me again. Powering through made me realize that even though I was devastated inside, I was such a strong person for being able to put on a brave face in the first place.

Talking is a huge coping mechanism — talking to your friends, your parents, your sister, your therapist — whatever. Whether it's a tiny problem or major life issue, talking it out is one of those things that's supposed to help. Guess what? Sometimes silence is the answer.

I am a talker, and I usually need someone to either talk to or bounce ideas off. I realized that talking — even mentioning his name — was sending me down the rabbit hole. The next thing I knew, I was screaming-crying on the way home from work and was depressed for days. I realized I had to stop talking about him and had to keep memories locked in my heart. Talking wasn't going to bring him back to me physically, so it needed to end.

At the end of the day, this person changed you. They shook you to your core, and you emerged a different, probably better and stronger person for it. A piece of your heart will always belong to them and, in time, that will be just fine with you.