This is for the broken hearts. The hearts that were only meant to love but instead were broken in return. This is for their owners and the 3 o’clock in the mornings they spent, half awake and heavily breathing. The cold bed sheets and wet pillowcases. The waning moonlight by the window and the stars that were once witnesses to their once great love stories.

This is for those who were left, those who had no choice but to leave, and those whose persons simply just disappeared.

This is for their stories: for stories of first love, for second or third love, for the stories of unrequited love, for stories of hookups and one night stands, for stories of being kept hanging, for the long distance relationships that did not work, for stories of wrong timing, for stories of years-long relationships that eventually ended, and even for those who didn’t even had a lengthy story to begin with.

This letter is for you. This is for all of us.

I’d like to start on a positive thought that the sadness and uncertainties you feel today could only mean a happier and brighter tomorrow. If you’re an optimist, this would be easy to believe but if not, darling, please hang on a little tighter. Once you had your heart broken, the road you travel never gets smooth all at once; it will be filled with bumps and holes, with hoping and despair, with wishing you’d just find the real one, and with actually wishing you’d never love again.

Today is tough, and I can’t promise that tomorrow won’t be, but let us all believe and trust in goodness. Let’s keep our faith.

That somewhere, somehow, in spite of the cracks and stitches your heart received from the past, a greater Being is slowly but passionately writing you a better story. Somewhere, somehow, this Person looks at you – at us – as perfect as we are with our own shattered pieces.

That is why you have to do your part; you have to begin somewhere. You have to start fixing yourself sometime. And that time is soon. I’m not saying you have to do it in a jiffy – for every one of us heals in our own time – but for your sake, hurry up.

Begin even if there’s still pain. Begin even if there’s still fear. Begin with accepting and forgiving, even if the person you have to forgive is yourself.

Let go of the anger and the hatred for it could eat not only you but what’s left of the love that lies in your heart. Begin with all the strength you have; begin even if your hands shake and your voice trembles. Begin by realizing that there are people and things, and the memories that they hold, that we can miss and reminisce but not want back.

After all, this is what all of us should learn: we need the heartbreaks. We need the heartbreaks in order for us to survive. The world is cruel and the people in it sometimes are, and the only way for us to be stronger is to know what it feels like to be weak. To be broken. To be left. To be unloved.

We need to fall in love with the wrong people for the most clichéd reason: because we were meant for a better one.

We need to fall for people who can’t love us back for us to know the feeling of being unloved. We need to feel something for that someone we had a one night stand with for us to know the difference of sex and making love.

We need to be left for someone else, for something else, and even for no reason, because that is simply how our story is written. We need to be cheated on neither because we deserved it nor for us to distrust the next person who will try to love us but because there are people who are simply that way. We need to be lied onto because that’s just the way they are. And it is not our fault. It is never our fault. And maybe, just maybe, it is also not theirs. Because the more we put the blame on someone else, the more reasons for us to despise them. Our hearts are made to love, to beat; it is not made to hold grudges, to hate. Perhaps the moment we fully understand this is the moment we set ourselves free.

This letter is for you. This is for all of us.

I, too, am like every one of you and like you, I hope I listen to myself.

It’s alright to cry. It’s alright to hurt. What’s not good is drowning ourselves in tears. What’s not good is hurting ourselves more by allowing ourselves to wallow in pain, and rejecting the love we should be receiving instead.

Let us stop blaming ourselves. Let us even stop blaming the people that hurt us. Maybe it’s time for us to start appreciating instead of hating; our favorite book, a new television series, the stars at night, a long-time friend, our families; there are a lot to appreciate and love in this world. Because this other cliché about loving ourselves first before being loved by others? It is true.

You are your own universe. And before others see how brightly your stars shine, you have to realize first that you have stars and even planets within you.

You have to realize that even with your flaws and that hint of sadness in your eyes, the chaos in your heart is what makes you, you.

Remember that while some people hate rainy days, other people wait weeks or even months for them. And that is you: you are a rainy day, sometimes mixed with thunder and raging winds.

You are a rainy day and while you may have spent years of your life waiting for someone who can turn you into a sunny one, maybe all that you needed is simply someone in a raincoat. Someone who will see you in a different light. Someone who will heal the storm inside you and bring out the calmness your heart deserves. Just keep yourself busy loving the life you live. Live as if you’ve never loved before. Live and try not to look back. Just live each day with much love you can give until tomorrow becomes that one day your heart has been waiting for.