The worst kind of heartbreak is when the same person repeatedly does it—and we give them permission.

I sometimes wonder if it’s possible to break my heart so much that it won’t be able to break any more. Instead, it will rest, cold and lifeless within my chest, unable to muster the strength to keep hurting after experiencing the emotional rollercoaster of all I’ve put it through.

There are different kinds of heartbreak, but I don’t think it matters when it comes down to it, because that deep feeling of losing someone we care about is the same regardless of cause or condition. I know that love isn’t easy, especially if it’s a deep spiritual connection, and I don’t particularly wish that it was.

I think it’s okay to get to the point where I’m tired of having my heart broken—especially by someone who loves me.

Perhaps it’s overly romantic, but heartbreak is easier to understand when love dies, or fails, or moves elsewhere. But I know that isn’t the case with us. You’re still here, and now my only thought is wondering if it hurt you when you hurt me.

I sometimes wish I could take a different approach, pretending that I don’t understand all of the “whys,” because I can never be mad at you. I can never hate you. I know how you struggle with the reality of us, or perhaps just the idea of us. I understand that we share challenges more than just your inability to unconditionally love a woman—but isn’t there a point when enough is enough?

Will you always run from me when things get hard?

That idea of quitting this connection has never worked for you and I—not in all these years or all the space between us. Not because either of us are gluttons for punishment, but because we can’t ruin what is meant to be, despite how hard you and I both have tried.

After each and every time you’ve broken my heart, I’ve wrapped it up in hope and given it back to you, telling you once again that I trust you with it.

Sometimes it seemed like you were done with the lessons that heartbreak brought us, but I see now that some things can only be learned the hard way. I know you never actually set out to break my heart, though I can’t even count how many times you have.

You have been determined to follow your own path, to explore everything that comes your way, but I also think there was this inner compass you had, somehow unconsciously knowing there was no way for us to grow without breaking each other’s hearts.

Often men are taught to have an impenetrable shell, but I know you feel things so deeply and your heart must have broken when you broke mine and any other woman’s who was lucky enough to be loved by you.

Perhaps it did have to be this way, but my only question is, did it have to stay that way as we move into the future?

Even in those moments of heartbreak where I was unable to do anything but sleep, I knew it was serving a purpose. Sometimes it would become apparent right away and others it would take months for me to truly see that everything happened exactly as it was meant to.

But that was all then—not now.

We are different than we were when we woke up this morning, and I’m sure we will change a few more times before our heads hit the pillow. I’m not dwelling on anything that has happened, I’m only wondering if my heart’s been broken for the last time.

Some will look at me and shake their heads in wonderment that I made the choices I have. Maybe they’ll even think I’m just plain crazy, but regardless, I wouldn’t change a thing.

In truth, I needed to have my heart broken as many times as I have.

I wouldn’t be the woman I am now, nor would I have the deep understanding of unconditional love that I feel toward you had I not been challenged to keep on loving you despite all of the risk. No matter how many times our relationship fell apart, I kept on loving you.

Maybe that’s what I mean when I say we can’t ruin what is meant for us.

There’s truth lingering in the shadows, saying that perhaps this time things will be different—that finally we’ve both reached a place where we could learn more from love’s embrace than her tears.

It doesn’t mean that we will always get it right, but it would mean we both wanted to try.

Like this, we would chose to stop hurting the person we care so much about, and instead, hold them close just like we are both yearning to do. As much as it doesn’t make sense, it has only been through this heartbreak that I realized how deep my love for you is.

There are those who think they know what you and I share, but even if they did, it doesn’t mean that they will ever fully understand. It doesn’t mean that they know what is best—or even that they are right. I hear their words often, encouraging me to give up and walk away. To go find “normal.”

They ask, “How many times are you going to let him break your heart?”

And my only reply has been, and will always be, as many times as it takes for us to get it right.
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Author: Kate Rose
Image: Harlow Heslop/Flickr
Editor: Danielle Beutell
Copy Editor: Emily Bartran
Social Editor: Callie Rushton