I am the red heart emoji. The emoji loves, with all it is, and goes all in. It expresses happiness, joy, and thoughtfulness to my closest friends and family. Sometimes, it expresses love to the wrong people, even if it can’t see it in the moment.

The red heart is temporarily blind when it comes to new friendships and relationships. It doesn’t see the warning signs that they might be sharing, because it’s too busy being comforted by the thought that someone wants to be close to it. The red heart has been broken in the past and tries to learn from those mistakes, but that kind of thing takes more time than one would think.

I’ve been in toxic friendships before. My red heart loved too much and without conditions, and it caused me pain. I’ve learned to teach myself to love safer and in a way that won’t hurt me as much but I’m still working on it.

“Crack!”

The sound of a rounded section of the heart that breaks off, needing only time and patience to heal itself. I wish there was a way to skip past the pain and healing bit, a way to teleport to the end of the process where I’m finally okay again, but that’s not how this works. Despite all of this, my red heart always bounces back. My red heart is inspirational and intermittently introverted, yet it is my identity. My red heart is all I am, and I have learned to appreciate it for what it is.

The pain and the mistakes are all part of the process. Sure, it can get lonely and exhausting, but I will learn from it time and time again, growing and healing and becoming better versions of myself throughout the process.

My red heart has caused me pain, but it also has given me my closest friendships. It’s given me friends that will love me always and unconditionally and for that, I will always be grateful.

Thank you, my red heart, for connecting me to the people I am closest to now. Thank you for learning to love yourself even when you make mistakes and for growing from every one of those even when it gets hard. Thank you for loving insistently and inevitably.