You’re Not A Failure At Love Because You’re Heartbroken

Franca Gimenez
Franca Gimenez

There’s no such thing as failing at love, there’s only refusing to try. You fail when you allow fear to keep you comfortable.

Love isn’t comfortable; it’s scary. It’s knowing there is someone out there who makes you feel like your life would fall apart without them, and it’s living with the perpetual fear of that possibility.

And when that moment becomes reality you feel like you’ve been broken. You feel your life move forward, but you’re walking through it facing backwards. One foot steps behind the other, instead of in front, and the past is a place you continue to retreat to, but when you lose some thing it’s completely normal to retrace your steps, and losing some one is no different.

One thing that continues to pass is time, and whenever you’re in pain you wish it would pass by faster.

And others will tell you that time heals all wounds, but you won’t feel yourself recovering until one day you wake up and the scab is completely gone. But you didn’t one day suddenly become better, it was a process that you were unaware was happening. Because sometimes you only realize you’re healing until after you’re healed.

And in the duration of this healing, when time feels slow and every day’s a struggle, the only thing to do is cope. So you attempt to distract yourself in every way possible, with people, things, substances, anything that will keep your thoughts from filling the silence. And then you realize that distractions only occupy your mind for so long, and that’s when the feeling of failure kicks in.

And failure turns into frustration because even if you succeed at everything else, the one place you want success to happen it won’t. But heartbreak isn’t failure, it’s trial and error. It’s a step taken toward something you thought was the right direction, but turned out to be wrong. And most times you don’t automatically reroute. You wander and feel lost.

But the time you spent giving your heart to someone who broke it is just as valuable as the time it takes to heal. Because the time you devoted to learning about someone else resulted in you learning about yourself.

It isn’t failure if you’ve become more aware of who you are and what you need; it would be failure to continue to settle for anything less.

And suddenly you find yourself adjusting to a new way of life without the person who used to make you happy, but you shouldn’t think of happiness as something that occurred in the past. Happiness is something you need to make room for in your future, and it needs to originate from a source within yourself. Don’t attempt to make your life happier by finding someone. Find happiness and then find someone to share it with. And find the strength to risk heartbreak as a result.

Your broken heart is an indication that you have enough courage to give so much of yourself to someone that you get hurt in return. You’re not a failure at love because your heart is broken, you’re a failure at love if you let the fear of heartbreak keep you from loving at all. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

Writer based in the Philadelphia area. Person who really loves her dog and watching cooking shows. Check out my writing on Thought Catalog and follow me on Facebook! Connect with me and submit your work on Collective World.

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