Every moment that you share with a person—even just meeting eyes with a stranger on the street—has the power of turning into a moment that stays with you forever.
When you go through your first heartbreak, all the moments you shared with that person replay through your mind on a constant loop. All the things you could have said and done to prevent that heartbreak and to save yourself from drowning in all that pain play through your mind. You start blaming yourself. You start blaming the other person. You look for any reason to give your mind closure and to not feel the way you do right now.
You remember all the good times, all the amazing moments you shared—every time they made you feel beautiful, every time you stayed up late talking, every time they made your relationship seem like it would be forever. You shut yourself off from the outside world. No matter what anyone says to you right now, none of it matters to you
.
Your mind is constantly running, searching for answers while your body lies still from all the pain. You constantly obsess over all that could have been said and done. You go into this shell and refuse to come out. All the things you used to love doing mean nothing to you right now. You think about what might have been and if there is any way to get back those moments. You hold yourself and cry out from the pain you feel. You just wish to have those moments back. You just wish to be with that person one more time and make everything okay.
You spend nights lying awake just thinking. You spend every single moment of your day thinking. All you do is think about everything you had with this person and how they hurt you. You start to believe that this pain will never go away. You miss that person and everything they brought with them—the way you laughed together, the way they looked at you, all their insecurities and all their moods. Even the thought of letting another person into your life and getting so close to them terrifies you. You go through days and months trying to move on.
But soon, one day, you wake up and you realize all those moments that you were craving to get back, to experience just one more time, don’t matter to you. You haven’t thought about them in a long time.
You become busy with your own life and the people around you. You realize you haven’t thought about that person even once, and thinking about them doesn’t bring you pain anymore. You realize you are around people who appreciate you and all those days you spent obsessing and crying no longer matter. You realize that this heartbreak, while possibly the worst moment in your life at the time, made you a stronger person. It made you understand things about yourself you didn’t even know. It made you see the world from a different perspective and see the relationship for what it was. It made you appreciate the amazing things in your life and that maybe that this relationship wasn’t the best for you.
Your entire relationship becomes clearer to you than it was before. All those times you would desperately crave even an ounce of their attention, all those times you constantly checked your phone to see even one message from them. No longer did you stay up late at night screaming at each other. You see the relationship for what it was, and all those things that you believe you did wrong, you work on them for your next relationship. You are more open to the idea of meeting another person and letting yourself fall in love.
You realize that you moved on, and while it did take time, you did it at your own speed and in your own space.
