They’re not any braver than you, or any stronger than you. Their breakup wasn’t any easier than yours, and their heart is not more stable than your own.
They didn’t receive a magical solution from a mystical being that showed them exactly what to do and exactly how to fix their heart after it was shattered into an overwhelming amount of tiny, little pieces.
They didn’t discover an age-old secret for healing. They’re not tougher than you, they’re not of a higher caliber of existence than you.
They just learned how to keep living their life despite being incredibly, immensely sad.
They made themselves get out of bed, and be with their friends, and do new things, and go on trips, and write, and read, and walk, and go to work, and cook a meal, and run – even when their grief felt like it consumed every ounce of their physical body.
They did not do these things flawlessly, perfectly, effortlessly. They did not survive this breakup in a way that was charming and romantic. Sometimes, their greatest achievement in a week was going to a party for 46 minutes and socializing without crying. Sometimes, their biggest moment of the month was going to bed instead of texting the person who broke their heart. Sometimes, they sobbed in the bathroom at work and then they washed their face and they walked back to their desk and kept going.
The kind of person who survives a broken heart isn’t doing it gracefully, and elegantly, and beautifully. They are living right in the middle of its ugliness, right in the middle of the loneliness and the crippling sadness and the real, physical nausea that can come from losing love.
You can be this person who survives a broken heart, you are this person. Because anyone can be, when they understand that it will not be easy and that it will not make sense.
When you sit right in the center of the pain, when you understand that ‘healing’ means a lot of tears and a lot of I don’t think I can do this moments, when you understand that the experience will not be magical and picturesque – then you will start to heal. Because you will stop trying to suppress the human side of you, and you will instead let it be a part of you while you continue to live. It will no longer be about trying to seem okay, and it will instead be about going to work and showing up to someone’s birthday party and having a fun night out and continuing to live – and understanding that sometimes you will still cry unexpectedly, or feel exhausted by a conversation, and that it’s okay that your sadness is still radiating around you while you heal.
That’s the kind of person who survives a broken heart. Someone who keeps living in the middle of the pain, who shows up through the ugliness and the fear and the exhaustion and the aching and doesn’t try to act like it shouldn’t be there. You can be that person. Just be you. Live in it. That’s when you will heal. 
