There are moments when all of us want to give up. Give up on motivation, give up on trying to find a speck of happiness, give up on being optimistic. There are moments when everyone doesn’t care if the glass is half empty or half full, it’s more satisfying to knock it over and watch it shatter on the floor below. And as the water forms in puddles around the shards of glass, tears mimic the action and start to well up in the bottom of our eyelids. One last straw, as simple as reading something that was written in your yearbook three years ago, sends the tears streaming down your face, without an end in near sight. There are moments when we all want to give up, because we know it’s easier than trying to move on.

I remember giving up. Nights when I would lie on my bed all night, crying until my tear ducts began to malfunction. There was no way to comfort me, because I was sure no one would understand or even care if they did. And just when I reached a zombie-like stillness and the sobbing came to an end, I would think of that horrid room one more time. I would hear the echoes of my voice coming back to me, full of promise. I would wonder about what had gone wrong, and what I could have done to change it. I would feel like it was all my fault, and I had disappointed everyone – mostly myself. And with those thoughts, my face was suddenly moist again. It didn’t take much to break me down. I was vulnerable, weak, breakable, and fragile – I was a disaster.

But much like you can shut the door on a disastrous room, I shut a door on my personal disaster. Plastered a smile on my face, disguised everything by laughing too much, and pretended nothing was wrong. I thought I was fooling everyone. I still went to my friends’ houses; I still got my homework done; I still remembered to watch Glee every week; I still laughed my ass off when one of my friends danced to Lady Gaga at drama awards night; I still had fun when I decided to go swimming in the rain one night. But I didn’t feel. I didn’t trust. I had no one to tell that my heart was broken, and that was the worst part. That’s what prolonged the time that I remained shattered. I thought hiding how I felt would help to make the pain go away, but it only made it worse.

Three months passed before I gathered the courage to tell someone about the nights spent in my room, the thousands of tearstained papers that litter my desk, the scar that still runs across my heart. I decided it was time to stop hiding. We don’t have to stop giving up, but we do have to stop hiding. I was much too afraid to trust anyone enough to tell them all of it, but I think that’s the unusual beauty of the whole affair. I’m not sure if I trust the girl that I decided to pour my heart out to. For all I know, the whole school is going to know about my pathetic break downs about a stupid audition that shouldn’t have meant so much to me. But we all reach a point where we don’t care anymore – and I’ve stopped caring. Everyone gets their heart broken sometimes, so why are we all so afraid to be public with our pain? Hiding it only makes it worse. And as far as those three agonizing months that I spent alone in my room, crying to my cat and wishing that I had a different life? Erased. In less than a week from spilling my guts to someone, I have moved on. I have found happiness that is real, tangible, and runs in the veins of my body.

There are moments when all of us want to give up, and that’s important to do. We just have to make sure that when we break down, there’s someone else there to witness it. And even if all that person does is extend his or her hand for you to grab, it means everything to know there’s at least one thing that you can hold onto. Hold this hand, and walk along with the body that is attached to it. Tell him or her of your heartaches; tell him or her of how you’ve just given up. Because in giving up, we all find the strength to finally move on.