“We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full”- Marcel Proust

**Trigger warning: Talk of self-harm and alcoholism**

We never expect it to hurt as much as it does. Then again, what do you know about love until it slams into your chest and knocks the wind out of your lungs? So, you fall in love and they leave.

You stop washing your hair and your skin is bruised with the creases from your sheets. Your mom wants to yell at you but your emotionless stare makes her eyes glaze over with tears and you’re not supposed to see your mom cry. You’ll probably start destroying yourself. Pulling apart razors from the bathroom to add scars to your shameful collection and hide them somewhere no one else can find them.

You’ll start smoking again even though it’s horrible for you and it makes you nauseous after you have gone without it for so long. Your throat starts to burn after a while too. You’ll run away without ever leaving your bedroom. You’ll let them mess you up and leave them drunken voicemails and tell them you haven’t cried in twenty-three days. But, you’re always crying.

You promise you’ll never love anything again because it hurts more than they told you it would. No one told you that this was love and maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s more than that; maybe it’s something from another world. Maybe it’s just your bones breaking. Maybe, it’s something less that you want to make bigger than it is.

Now you’re older and you know to expect to come out of the other side missing a few more pieces of yourself but sometimes you get caught up in it. Sometimes, you forget that it’s supposed to hurt because it’s not supposed to hurt. Next thing you know, you blink and you’re bleeding again. Whether it is, emotionally, physically or both. It’s like you’re trying to rip yourself to shreds all over while you try to pick up the pieces of yourself. Everyone thinks you’re so mysterious because your mouth is sewn shut with the sudden death of love but, you’re just so silent because they’ve taken the best of you, you can hardly open your eyes, forget about your mouth. I guess the worst part about love dying is that you don’t die as quickly. You just attend the funeral and visit the grave every time you’re drunk. You’re always so drunk.

At the same time, after a while that part of you that was so hung up on the idea of whomever you were chasing dies too. You learn to live with the fact that they are gone. Don’t get me wrong you think about them sometimes but not as often. You remember good times with the kind of nostalgia that reminds you it’s in the past. You get better, slowly but surely. You look at the stars without a pain in your chest. You paint without the color black taking over. You paint in vibrant colors. You write a new goddamn chapter. You teach yourself to be happy without them.

So yeah, it hurts, you bleed, you think, you dwell but in the end it’s worth it. In the end, you better yourself and you learn from it. You know what to look out for. You’re going to slip up and hit your head sometimes but that’s okay too. You can stop and cry but don’t stay there longer than you need to. In the end, you’re okay. Even if that’s all you can be.