I was a heap on the floor. I could barely breathe as the only comfort to my flood of emotion was the cold tile of the bathroom floor that I let my face press up against. He had said the words that I knew were coming, but still echoed in my ears as though I was hearing them each for the first time. ‘I’ve decided to be with her…’ Even as I write this I remember the pain, but I also remember the lessons that I needed to learn in that heartbreak. It was hard to see at the time, as my vision was blurred from the tears magnifying my present pain, but as I look back on everything now I see that I had so much to learn from it all. Here are the 4 things my broken heart taught me:
4. Trust the feelings.
I felt it before I felt it. That’s right! I knew that it was coming. I did not have all his attention. There were so many days that I wondered what was going on and what direction we were heading to, but I told myself the answer that I wanted to hear instead of the one that was actually true. When the person you are ‘with’ goes silent for days or weeks at a time and you feel a sense of wondering and concern, that is NOT paranoia, but your instinct telling you what the reality of your situation is. That sense of loss that comes over you can either be a foretelling of what is to come or the beginning of the process that you need to work through now. Your deciding to go back into situation that your gut is telling you to come out of because you want to try and make it work is only prolonging the inevitable. True love does not leave, it stays and keeps you secure.
3. I am more than an option.
During this person’s ‘season of deliberation,’ I allowed them to go back and forth between myself and someone (well actually a few people). I was trying to be the person who was the ‘friend first’ and so I would let them tell me stories of the other people, though it was killing me inside to hear it, I wanted to show that we could be friends AND have a relationship. As I stood (or lay on the bathroom floor) some months later, I realized that these actions did not translate to him as me lobbying for this position, but rather my reiterating that I am alright being an option. I did everything that I thought would convince him that I was the right choice, but I was leaving him open to have other options. I learned that true love makes the choice so that you don’t have to. When someone decides to love you, you don’t have to convince them over and over again that you are worthy of it, but every day they will fall into deeper love with you as you uncover, through time, the many facets and traits of your being.
2. True love will not judge me by my scars.
There came a point in this toxic situation that I felt that I was too far in to turn around. That I had done so much in this that someone else hearing the situation wouldn’t want me either. And so, I was afraid of what this ‘situationship’ had made me and almost fell into believing that I couldn’t have anything better than partiality and fractioned commitment. I had been through so much I didn’t even know what being in anything else looked like. I had been so used to the pain and the heartbreak of broken promises and misleading that I forgot what I looked like as a whole person. And because I didn’t know what I looked like, I didn’t think that I could get anything better than what I had. It wasn’t until I was out and totally healed that I realized judgment would only be passed by those who didn’t want to see anything more than my scars because true love would not judge me for them or hold them against me.
1. My brokenness was not all done at the hands of someone else.
This was the hardest one to admit. It wasn’t all his fault. Yes, I needed to learn and absorb lessons 4, 3 and 2, but without this lesson the theme would be that my brokenness, my scars, my pain, my tears, my heartache was all brought on at the hands of someone else. And that is not true at all. Yes, he did start breaking my heart, but he was only responsible for the first crack. All the other cuts, scraps, cracks, and breaks were done by me. He may have acted as though I was not worthy of the love I desired the first time, but once I stayed in the situation I was saying that his sentiments, his actions and his words that perpetuated the lie were true. The biggest lesson that I had to learn about my broken heart was that all I had become, all the pieces that I now had to pick up were not all broken by his hand, but many of them were broken by me. I had to come out of the victim role and start taking responsibility for what I looked like and what I stood (or didn’t stand) for. I had to say that I allowed him to treat me like this by telling myself that my instincts were not correct, acting contrary to how I truly felt in my heart and letting him think I was an option and by thinking I was unworthy of total and complete love and commitment. My brokenness wasn’t all his doing at all…it was mine for allowing him to break me.
Today I am a completely different woman! No, I have not shut my heart off to the world, because that would mean that love could not flow in nor out of me and that is my true gift, but I am now complete as an individual. No longer pieces of what I should be, but taking each day in the wholeness that I was created to achieve and live. It is in this space that I know all that I desire will find me, since I already have all that I need.
Originally published at dreamsrecycled.com.
Originally published at medium.com