Sometimes I wonder how much more I can take. How many more times I can try to open my heart to love knowing that it may not work out because I don’t think I was ever meant to have my heart broken this many times.

I am a romantic by nature, long before I even knew such a phrase existed I wished on shooting stars and remembered the smell of the rain on my skin. I see love in everything so of course I would want love in my own life. Not just the love from family, friends, or even children, but the love from someone who chooses me. Someone whose soul can feel like home. Who understands and is there for me, loving me right through this mysterious journey of life.

Maybe it is just a romantic dream though. After all, there is a difference between love and being able to build or wanting to build a life with someone. Marriages don’t always come with love, just as the greatest of loves don’t always stay together. I suppose this is what the heartbreak has taught me, though—that love isn’t logical and that dreams aren’t always meant to come true. 

I’ve healed, released, let go. And still I’m aware of how much my heart has been through. I’ve rescued myself, learned to be my greatest protector, and have gotten to the space where I no longer know loneliness. I love myself and my life, and yet despite all of that, I don’t know how to try again. To risk once again the kind of heartbreak that feels like a setback. The kind that reminds me of what I once had, and maybe what it feels like to be truly alive. 

Of course I can always find the purpose of any heartbreak, but I think what I’m realizing is that I no longer want to. Purpose shouldn’t only be found in pain but in joy or perhaps even romance. I no longer want to make the best of the situation or be told that it will eventually work out. 

When does heartbreak actually become too much that we’d rather live with what we have than risk it all again?

It seems no matter how much I go through, or we go through as a collective, that we are always still looking for love. We’re hoping for our fairy tale and waiting for the one. Yet, healing teaches us we are the one, which then makes us question what or who are we actually looking for then. And maybe that’s the thing about too much heartbreak; it leads to questions that either no one knows the answer to, or that we don’t want to answer. Because love is knowing that despite all odds or logic, we still crave the very thing we’ve only had glimpses of, and we’re still hoping that it will last a lifetime. 

I can’t say that I am unaffected by what I’ve been through. And while I’ve had my moments of wondering why and questioning the forces of the universe, acceptance silences those arguments. Yet that doesn’t mean there’s a fairness that permeates my life. Or my heart. Because I know it’s not just me that feels this way, who isn’t the only one tired of giving chances to love only to have it returned to sender or ghosted altogether. 

Because while I was never meant to have my heart broken this many times, love was also never meant to be what it seems it now is. It wasn’t meant to be a currency, or something you shopped for like the latest styles on a boring Friday night. It wasn’t meant to be a salve for your loneliness epidemic, or a way to make you feel better about yourself. So maybe it’s not that all of our hearts have been broken too many times but that we’ve lost the idea of what love is supposed to be. 

This heartbreak that I have lingers in the corners of my life. It shapes the decisions that I make and what feels worth it or not. Because heartbreak makes you see not only the difference between needing and wanting someone, but it raises your standards. It changes how you view love, not just because you can spot the red flags a mile away, but because suddenly being by yourself in your clean home, with your freshly laundered sheets reading or catching up on your favorite series in peace suddenly doesn’t feel like a consolation prize. 

And then in those moments it hits me, what it actually means to no longer accept anything that takes away your peace. No matter how addicting love can be or how delicious certain lips may taste, it’s not as valuable as peace. I think when I was younger I struggled with believing a passionate love could also be a peaceful one, one that could fit into my edges with ease. Yet, I know now, as much as heartbreak hurts and changes us, it doesn’t mean it’s all for naught. Because I do believe love can be peaceful; after all, that is what I now bring to the table. Love doesn’t have to be a struggle of wills or a roller coaster of differing attachment cycles. Maybe, just maybe, love isn’t magical because of the inconsistencies but because of the way it quietly shows up in the space you never thought it would.

And there it makes a home and brings the quiet reminder that no matter how hurt we’ve been, no matter what love has become, we can’t ever actually give up hope on it finding us.

~

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