I Swore You Broke My Heart But It Turns Out You Just Cracked It

I remember the day I saw you for the first time after two years. You had that light in your eyes and even though you didn’t say a word, I could see that you were smitten. Or perhaps that’s what you wanted me to believe.

You welcomed me into your world and reminded me of what being loved and cared for felt like. And no matter how rocky things could get between us, the desire to be together led us to each other even in times where it was hard to put our egos on the side. But one day, this just wasn’t enough for you and no matter how much I loved you, it wasn’t enough for the both of us. So you decided to leave and my plea to give us a chance to reach the milestone I was praying for didn’t resonate in the heart you once swore you loved me with.

So you left. You decided you wanted me out of your life, out of the picture you once painted to me with such beautiful words. You just left and never looked back. And for days I was playing that moment over and over in my mind, wondering what I did wrong or if I could have changed things. I spent days thinking perhaps I was the issue. I was trying to make sense of the whole situation, I was trying to address my madness with a rational approach. But when it comes to the matters of the heart and to the feelings, nothing ever makes sense. So instead of fighting my emotions, I embraced them. I surrendered to the pain, to the tears, to the anger and learned to see the beauty in my brokenness.

And today, past the haziness of the initial painful days, I have accepted the fact that what was is not anymore and it is finally time to move on. I have accepted that you cannot stretch seasons and when a season is over, whatever it brought into your life also comes to an end.

When you left I was broken; a brokenness I, never in a million years, thought I could ever survive. It was painful. It was unbearable some days but every morning I was able to open my eyes and breathe was a reminder that I was not built to break. I was still alive, thriving and determined to get through this. Every morning I woke up, I reminded myself that no matter how long it would take, one day I would be okay. And I knew it because I had been there before. And then one day it finally occurred to me that perhaps I wasn’t broken. Perhaps what you did is just crack my heart and soul open so that the light could get in. I thought I would never make it, never really recover from it. But here I am, having made it through the storm without really knowing how and looking back, smiling again and ready to fight for my life because that is what I have always done and that is what I will keep on doing until my last breath.

So thank you. Thank you for allowing me to realize that there is a life after you. Thank you for reminding me that I could do it on my own and if not, I could rely on people who have my back and love me unconditionally for who I am. Thank you for reminding me that I don’t have to earn anybody’s love and that I shouldn’t have to compete with anybody else or beg for attention and loyalty because they are a given. Thank you for reminding me that I shouldn’t have to compromise my self-identity or what I believe in for love or lower my standard because somebody who loves me will step up to them. Thank you for reminding me that I am beautifully flawed, imperfect and yet perfectly loved by an awesome and wonderful God and if my flaws are enough for him, they are surely okay for any man who truly loves me. Thank you for reminding me that if I can love the wrong man so much, I can certainly love the right man God is preparing for me even more.

Thank you for reminding me that I need to love myself a little bit more and rely a little bit less on someone else to fill a void that only I can fill. Hadn’t you left, I would have never found my way back to myself.

So thank you for reminding me that I am more than enough and no matter how hard it was for you to love me, I will always be enough and worth being love for the people who TRULY love me. For now, I am wearing my pain like my heels and building myself from scratch but I am confident that I will rise again because that’s what I have always done; but most importantly, because was not built to break.