To The Man Who Broke My Heart: Did You Even Know You Did?

I keep thinking that one day this pain is going to go away. I keep thinking that happiness is going to find me. Yet the harsh reality is that I still am heartbroken.

I am broken from loving someone so fucking much that I lost a part of myself. I keep wondering if I will ever find that part of me back. I am so sad because I still don’t know what to make of my feelings. I’ve questioned my own sanity so much and I feel like such a loser for falling for someone so different than myself; someone who I probably never had a chance with anyway.

And when I think of him I don’t feel beautiful, or happy, or even myself. I feel incompetent. I feel like I’m not good enough and never was. I think of aspects of my personality and self that I wish to change, but I’m not going to lie. So much, do I wish that he would notice me. I wish I glowed to him. I wish I mattered to him—like the way he does to me. Never have I wondered how I could love someone so much and be so distraught, when I’m not even quite sure if he really knows. I’m not even sure he knows that my first year in college was flipped upside down because of him.

And I’ve asked myself so much—is this is even love? But then, my ears start to ring. My palms get sweaty, and the thought of him embracing me makes me feel free. It is beautiful in a sense. It’s beautiful for me to know that my capacity for love was so great that reciprocation wasn’t even important. But the heartbreak, my friend, was quite real. Never would I had thought that I would be outside alone at 2 AM crying over a guy who I wished would love me, or at the very least knew how I felt. It is dark. It’s sad. It’s even horrifying.

Yet there is something inspiring about this experience of heartbreak that I’ve had to go through. Whenever I wonder if I had enough to reasons to fall in love with him, I tell myself to stop, because my emotions are valid. They’re out of my control. It becomes clear that indeed I did love him. I loved him so much that the quality of my life suffered, regardless of if he knows or ever will know. I prayed to God for him. I asked God to connect our souls. I prayed in late hours of the night to move on and to finally stop crying.

Though all this time later, I’m still crying, and I’m not quite sure when the tears will stop streaming down my cheeks. When everyone else in my home is asleep, when everything is silent except for the woes in my head, and the ringing in my ears, I quietly sob. I can’t help but dream of a lifetime of me with him.

But I know that our souls are so far apart. I know that he doesn’t care about me the way I care about him, and perhaps that’s why the tears fall so fast and heavily. Yet I’m on my way toward the brink of moving on. And I am grateful that I was able to experience the nauseating pain of heartbreak. I’m forcing myself to find freedom. I finally see that happiness, and artistry, and beauty are within my soul. So I’ll keep looking up at the stars, at God, even if I’m crying, because in those very moments I evolve. I’m enough and always have. I’m just beginning to realize that.