I’ve felt so stupid lately for being consumed by heartbreak. I feel stupid for talking about him or the situation instead of just moving on, but then I feel stupid for staying silent and letting the hurt he caused stay hidden. I would roll my eyes when I wrote another journal entry contemplating the same feelings. I would scold myself for writing love letters to someone who had wiped his hands clean of me. I would punch the water in the shower when more tears continued to come to my eyes. I would feel the secondhand embarrassment of my friends when I talked about it again and again. 

So I would tell myself over and over, “my next blog post will be something profound and beautiful about life. No heartbreak, no failing the bechdel test. Grow a pair, iz.” 

But I’ve grown a lot softer over these past few weeks. Softer on myself and my feelings and the world. So I’m happily typing on my computer right now to tell you all about heartbreak. 

Because heartbreak isn’t stupid. If we think heartbreak is stupid then we also have to believe love is stupid, and as much as we sometimes try to convince ourselves it is, it’s simply not true. 

They’re both a driving force in this world. We fall in love with people, and those become our best friends and soulmates who all of our past and future memories are with. We fall in love with our passions, and those become our careers and hobbies. We even fall in love with inanimate objects, and those become our comforts and decorations. Heartbreak is just the same. We experience it young, and it forms our trauma that protects us in subconscious ways. We try to process it, and it becomes our art and creations. We run from it, and it pushes us into situations we never imagined being in. 

So here I am, writing about heartbreak. Because I feel like I’ve felt it five different times this year. But the heartbreak is driving me to love, and I think that’s worth documenting. 

But I must start from the beginning. 

This time last year, I had “The Prophecy” on repeat. I had this deep belief that I was not meant to find love in this lifetime, which is something people commonly fear, but it’s such a lonely feeling that you think it’s just you. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to be understood, and even worse, I didn’t think I knew how to love. I didn’t think anyone deserved to be with someone who didn’t know how to love. I used to be okay with this fact, being totally okay with being alone, but the alone turned to loneliness and I was falling into a pit of despair. I so badly wanted to love. I wanted to be loved. I started meeting up with dating app profile after dating app profile, but I never tried to make them go any further; my fate was sealed. 

Until someone sold me on promises of love and loyalty and understanding. 

He made me feel special. And feeling special blinds the fears — for a little while, anyways. 

Then I started feeling lonely again in January, but it wasn’t the same. I was loving someone so much, I knew it was possible for me to love, but the love seemed to be pouring into a void. The relationship should’ve ended there. But when it’s your first time falling in love and the beginning was painted in beautiful hues of your wildest fantasies, your hopeless devotion might as well be your religion. So instead I listened to “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” and “Peter” throughout our entire relationship and pretended like they were just good songs and didn’t correlate. 

I got hit hard, five times over, throughout the next seven months. Bruised from dismissal. Cut open from resignation. Shoved to my knees from duplicity. Buried from abandonment. “loml” and “How Did It End?” were the new songs I had moved to. 

But even after our many endings, I kept the leash around my neck for him to pull on if he ever felt like it. I kept believing we were on the same page. I kept holding onto that hopeless devotion. I know I’m repeating myself from previous writings, but that’s because I kept repeating.

I couldn’t handle the silence we ended on and called. I heard everything I wanted to and left with beautiful closure. I reflected on all the ways I was wrong, knocking myself down to put him back on the pedestal. Then there were little tugs on the leash and I am a loyal, well-trained dog. 

So I kept writing love letters and posting songs on my stories for him to see. I schemed ways we could make things work and fled past all the “road closed” signs to plan out our dreams again. 

Until I learned we weren’t on the same page at all. And I don’t think we ever really were. I broke down again, this time with “Black Dog” and “Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”. Over and over, cursing my willing naivety for making me look stupid time after time. But the light had been turned on. The shadows I ignored had nowhere to hide now. And those weren’t shadows I wanted anywhere near me anymore, because they weren’t mine. 

His patterns are not mine to try and rearrange. His insecurities are not mine to repent for. His pain does not disregard mine. And my faults do not excuse his. 

So after a message request on his part, and a provoking message of my own, I got blocked on everything. My stomach dropped, but this time with relief. I found myself being grateful that he did what I did not have the strength to do. The connection was severed. I didn’t have to look anymore. I didn’t have to wait for signs. I didn’t have to dig my tired, bloody nails into false hope. I could take off the collar and breathe. 

Maybe one day I’ll know why I held on so tightly. But for now, I can be grateful to know the kind of love I will never again let myself be a sacrifice to.

The day I got blocked was the day Taylor Swift got engaged with the song “So High School” on her post, and a whole new album of Travis Kelce songs to come soon. Seeing someone I’ve been para social with since I was six, witnessing all of her heartbreak, finally be with someone who is truly enamored by her was the biggest sign I could’ve received. True love does exist, and seeing the secret garden he created for her with the beautiful ring she deserves on my feed proved that. It showed me that even when it seems impossible to move on, there will come a day when you can rejoice that those things didn’t work out. 

That same evening, when I was walking out of the pilates studio after teaching, I witnessed the rain with the sun still shining. It was like glitter, shimmering and sparkling as it fell gracefully through the sunlight. The sky was celebrating something and I got to be a part of it. I locked the door, then turned to the other side of the building and saw a double rainbow. The last time I saw a double rainbow was the same night I realized I was entering a relationship, almost a year ago. I got in my car, and “Kind of Girl” by MUNA started playing, despite it not being on the playlist I was listening to last. I discovered that song when I was first dating him. It was what pushed me to try with him, and trust that I could maybe experience love. It was on repeat for our first month together. I went to skip it fast, not wanting the memories, but I stalled my finger over the skip button, letting it play through. It suddenly had a new meaning to it, like I was learning to believe the same things I was the last time around, but this time for me. For the future me who would get to experience love again. When I pulled up to my parents house that evening to eat my moms cooking, a huge flock of birds flew out from the grass, and I skipped past the hydrangeas into the house to tell my mom, “An angel has gained her wings again.” 

Then Hugh Grant’s voice was in my head, “Love actually is, all around.”

I’ve written this post throughout the span of a week and a half, and Hugh Grant’s voice has never left my head. I hear it when I scroll through all of Keli Holiday’s tiktoks about his song “Dancing2” that describes his relationship with abbie, and cry at the love they have. I remember it on wednesday’s, when I watch the new episodes of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” and then get to call my best friend and talk about it. I still believe it when my roommate and close friend comes and sits on my bed to feel comfort in her own heartbreak. I even enjoy it during the fleeting moment of being a bartender and falling in love for the night with the drunk customer who calls me “love.” 

I’m overwhelmed by the amount of love I’m seeing everywhere. It’s like I’ve gained a new magic that’s opened up my vision to another layer of the world. A layer with light, belief, and adoration. I’ve seen more love in these past two weeks than I’ve seen in the past year. So what’s stopping me from seeing more? If I see it all around, in other people and things, why would I never get to experience it for myself again? 

Today, as I’m writing this ending and getting ready to post, it marks one year since I had first started dating the man I thought I would marry and move away with. Laying in his bed crying because I was scared of falling in love while he wiped my tears feels like ten years ago. That girl never imagined she’d fall and end up hitting the floor instead of landing in his arms. 

But heartbreak is usually never an imaginable thing. When it happens, it means the world you had built for your future isn’t one you can visit anymore. The future seems bleak, and it’s so easy to believe we’ll never make it past the hurt. That these feelings will never go away, our hearts will never mend, and we’ll never experience it with anyone else. But if that were true we’d only have one Taylor Swift album, and that’s not a world I want to exist in.

I believe true love exists, more now than at any point in my 23 years. I now know that I can love someone, and love them with everything I am. If that’s all that came from the past year, then I will walk with grace that I got that experience. 

Because I don’t want to be closed off anymore. I don’t want to be lonely and accept the karma I think I deserve from a past life I have no memory of. I want to live for love in every way I can, because I think it’s the most beautiful driving force to live by. 

So I’d like to introduce you to lovergirl iz. She listens to new kinds of music and is writing all the time at her cute little desk. She wears pink lipstick and has started wearing dresses for fun. She pours all of her love into herself and her friends who need it more. She talks whimsically as she tells all the signs she saw throughout the day, and takes full breaths. Sometimes she still cries, but she tastes the salt of her eyes and thanks the world for letting her experience such deep emotions. She’s made it through so much already, that she can keep making it through these next chapters.

And her new motto, still in Hugh Grant’s voice, is: “Love actually is, all around.” 

xo – a girl who suddenly loves to love