What Heartbreak Actually Taught Me:
People often say that hurt people hurt people, and for a long time I hated hearing that because it sounded like an excuse.
Now I understand it differently.
When we don’t know how to regulate our own emotions, we often rely on other people to regulate them for us. When those people become distant, all of those emotions suddenly have nowhere to go.
That’s exactly what happened to me.
Part of me wishes I had been emotionally mature enough to handle everything differently. I wish I had known how to soothe myself instead of searching for reassurance from someone else. I wish I had understood my own attachment before it cost me so much.
But another part of me knows that if I hadn’t gone through losing that version of our friendship, I probably would’ve never learnt those lessons at all.
I still grieve that friendship.
Five months later, I still do.
We still text. We still snap. But I can feel the distance between who we once were and who we are now, and sometimes that hurts more than I know how to explain.
But I also know that this experience changed me.
I learnt how to take accountability.
I learnt how to self-soothe.
I learnt that my mind naturally searches for abandonment when I’m scared, and that those thoughts aren’t always reality.
Most importantly, I learnt that I can survive losing someone I never imagined losing.
Heartbreak has a way of reducing you back to the most insecure version of yourself. It makes you question your worth, your character, and whether you’ll ever feel whole again.
But if you’re willing to sit with that pain instead of running from it, something incredible happens.
You slowly become someone stronger than the version of yourself who entered it.
My big take away is heartbreak will break you to the same insecure kid you once was and make you feel the most alone in the world. Yet if you give it time, pateince and learn and understand yourself, you grow into someone you never thoguht you would become and be better than the last and that is the most craziest thing i have learnt. You have to be at rock bottom to then reach for the stars.
