“I been watchin’ you, workin’ day and night, slavin’ so hard you barely have time to catch your breath. People do that for three reasons. Either they crazy, or stupid, or tryin’ to forget. And with you, I knew you was tryin’ to forget. I just didn’t know what.” -Nicholas Sparks

1. You stay super busy.

Whether it’s with work or a new hobby you become obsessed with anything that distracts you from your own pain.

2. You take on everyone’s problems before your own.

If you’re helping someone else you aren’t thinking about your own problems.

3. You never say no when someone asks you to do something.

Everything is yes. Simply because you need to be doing something or you’ll go crazy.

4. You turn to music.

You find those songs you suddenly relate to, that just explain every horrible thing you are feeling. In reality, you can’t even find those words yourself or the courage to say them out loud.

5. There are certain people you avoid eye contact with.

Those people who really know you, the ones who can see through your bluff you don’t look at. You don’t want them to know you’re hurting.

6. You never really are honest when people ask how you’re doing.

Everything is fine. Even though it’s so far from it. It’s easy to lie. You are hurt enough you don’t want to make people uncomfortable with feelings that overwhelm you with guilt because you aren’t over it yet.

7. You make an effort to be too positive.

It’s kind of like you’re putting up this front maybe if you keep trying and get people to believe it, you will too.

8. But you get inside your head over thinking things.

You know you shouldn’t dwell in the past but it haunts the shit out of you because all you keep thinking was how happy you used to be. You want that back but at the same time, you don’t know how you’re going to get through this.

9. So you go out just to distract yourself to numb the pain.

Physically you might be out throwing back drinks and smiling but emotionally you are so checked out. But you do what they tell you to do because if you weren’t there and out you’d be home upset and alone. But what you realize is even in a crowded room you feel alone.

10. And you break down in private.

No one will ever see you cry. But you cry a lot more than you’d ever admit. It’s just all these feelings built up you can’t make sense of and you’re just trying to process it and get through it.

11. Then you try and make light of the situation laughing it off.

Because if you’re making people laugh or making a joke out of this maybe it’ll decrease the blow. Sometimes the people who are hurt the most shed light and positivity to others because they know what it’s like to feel the opposite.

And everyone tells you, you’ll get over it in due time. But for some reason, it feels like time has frozen and this heartbreak is the place in which you’re trapped. You know it’ll fade. You know you’ll wake up and not think of them one day. But that one day seems so far off.

So muddle through all of it just trying to be okay until you can look back at this with a smile that’s real.