An Open Letter To The Girl Who Wants To Punch Me In The Face

Though I acknowledge and appreciate the differences in human experiences, and while your heartbreak is (and always will be) uniquely and completely your own, I must urge you to consider that I have been where you are. Newly crushed, destroyed at the hands of the one person you thought you could trust and love infinitely. Losing the other half of you, the half that has allowed you to gently lean on it while you attempt to figure out who you are and where you want to be. Sweet kisses, hours spent doing nothing but enjoying the shared space with someone for whom you would do absolutely anything. You’ve built up a world, a house that is framed by these intimate moments. These moments are woven through experiences, strengthened by tears, blood, and sweat. That world is your creation. And that world, that creation in your mind, has been destroyed.

Now you are (as I was once) left to find out where it all went. This is the important part.

You must collect these pieces, the rubble leftovers from a mighty storm. You breathe air into your core – your head, your heart, your spirit. Now is the time to wisely decide what you will do with the photos you can no longer look at without feeling sick. Clothes that were his. Notes you wrote and kept tucked away for safety. Text messages in which you professed your fervent love. Proof that there was a time, and it feels like yesterday, when all of it was real. How is it all shattered so quickly? If I may be so bold, it doesn’t matter. When someone really wants to let you go, someone will let you go. You see this as a punishment, but I encourage you to see it as an opportunity for growth. To realize that you are worthy of someone who simply won’t let you go. This is a blessing we are all entitled to. Regardless of the reason your carefully built walls caved in, the fact remains that you are still the wonderful person you know yourself to be. Your former love remains the wonderful person you knew him to be. He just no longer wants to be wonderful with you. You are allowed to be furious. You are allowed to be so monumentally angry that nothing could put out your fire.

But who are you, with all of your anger and bitterness and heartache, to use these things to try to tear another down? Another who has done nothing to deserve the things you’ve said and done out of anger and bitterness and heartache.

Healing begins from within. No building you could burn, no vodka you could chug, no train tracks you could lie on will erase the suffering you feel because that suffering is born of a relationship between your mind and another’s. His mind has simply changed, and it is deeply insulting. But your anger is best served cold, to a close friend,  a journal, a piece of art. Your bitterness is for singing at the top of your lungs, for doing things you knew you could but never actually dared, and for throwing your heart into your life’s work. Your heartache can only be held by you, a crying shoulder, and the knowledge that despite who you are or what you have done, you can now move forward being not only a fabulously successful person, but a great person. A person who sees value in every human life, who understands that not everyone who pisses you off is out to get you, who understands that this battle in your mind will end. It will. In the meantime, I suggest lots of bubble baths, belly-aching laughs, good, honest friends who will be eager to help you heal, and chocolate.

This isn’t forever. You have survived before, but it is not enough to just survive. Survive better. Survive smarter. But please, survive kinder.