There used to be a quiet spot where I could close my eyes and still hear her voice, and the voice of hers in my head would take me back to that place before she broke my heart, and I would feel good for a moment before it all came rushing back - those times were gone and they had been violently plucked from me.
Betrayal is a special kind of violence because it doesn't leave a scar anyone can see until they're close enough to brush against it. It takes love itself and taints it with fear, trapping you between misery and pain with no way forward but through them both. For far too many, the journey ends here.
The first heartbreak of your life is a unique experience that everyone should have, and in that way, I'm thankful to her for wrenching me through that jungle, relentlessly dark though it may have been. I would have had no other way of knowing what it was to love again, in spite of my fear - a far greater and more fulfilling cure than to have loved and never lost at all.
Your first love may often enough be mere happenstance. You find that boy or girl and it clicks and there are angel's songs in your heart and air beneath your feet. The second time, and indeed every time after that, it's a choice to let go, to trust that should you land winded on your back again, you'll also have the strength to pull yourself back to your feet yet again. No less in pain, but at least aware that no roads are always low and the bad times make you that much less afraid and maybe just strong enough to take the next one standing up.
And so, when I found myself leaning against the wall with my eyes buried in my forearm, I took less solace in the fact that I was standing than I had anticipated. The sinking pit in my stomach was both nauseating and something I needed. It was the throbbing realization of life changing forever and the last fading moments of the past slipping away into pure memory. Oddly, I wasn't overwhelmed by the pit, in fact, my mind would oscillate between sorrow and numbness, alternating between utter despair and nothing at all. Like even my heart needed to take a moment before continuing on.
When your stomach is sore from sustaining your sobs, and your back aches from the days you couldn't lift yourself from the floor, when your throat is hoarse and your mind teeters on the razor-thin edge between hope and despair, platitudes do nothing for you. No one gives a fuck how many fish are in the sea.
Even a mended heart will never know that same joyful place of uninhibited connection. This is how you will view the world and all the people in it: as capable of causing you pain. You don't need to assume the worst of everyone you meet to have the possibility hanging in the back of your mind, like a bear in hibernation.
I know I said that it gets easier the next time, but that's a little bit bullshit as I haven't yet found the next time. I suppose I'm guilty of recycling other people's wisdom. It's been some years, and there have been some fleeting brushes with romance, but nothing solidifies. On my down days, I fear that there is a part of me that has become too damaged to connect, like my wires have shorted out and I'll need to be rebuilt. Other times, I think it's just bad luck.
The one thing that I know for sure, is that I wouldn't change my life for anything. This is right where I need to be.
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