I didn't know love could ache like that.
Not the poetic kind of ache—the kind songwriters romanticize.
I'm talking about the kind that feels like something inside you broke, and no one heard it crack but you.
The first cut came without warning.
One day, we were laughing. Sharing playlists. Making promises.
The next, I was staring at a screen, reading a message that changed everything.
"I can't do this anymore."
No explanation.
Just silence.
And silence, I learned, could scream louder than any fight ever could.
I kept reading the message over and over, as if the words might shift into something softer. They never did.
And in that moment, something else broke—my belief that love was enough.
---
I wandered for days in a fog.
People talk to you after heartbreak, but they don't always see you.
They hand you clichés like bandages: "Time heals." "It's for the best." "You'll find someone better."
But what if I didn't want someone better?
What if I just wanted the version of them who used to look at me like I was the answer to something?
---
Grief is strange. It's not just for death.
I grieved the loss of a future we never got to live.
The inside jokes that now felt like foreign languages.
The little routines we created—brushing teeth together, falling asleep mid-conversation, texting each other about things no one else would understand.
No one warns you that heartbreak is a death without a funeral.
You don't get flowers.
You don't get casseroles.
You just get asked to "move on" from someone who still shows up in your dreams.
---
But here's the part that scared me most:
I didn't stop loving them, even after they left.
Even after the silence stretched into months.
Even after they posted photos with someone else.
I was angry—furious, actually.
But underneath the rage was still love, soft and stupid.
---
It felt unfair. Why should I still love someone who didn't choose me?
Why should love have to be something I suffer through alone?
But pain has a way of uncovering things.
In the ache, I discovered truths I'd never have learned otherwise:
That loving deeply doesn't make you weak.
That heartbreak doesn't mean the love was a mistake.
And that sometimes the first cut is not just an ending—it's a mirror.
---
I looked into that mirror and saw parts of myself I had ignored:
The need for affirmation. The fear of abandonment. The way I had poured too much of myself into being "enough."
The truth is, I had loved them so loudly, I forgot how to love myself quietly.
---
The first cut taught me more than any classroom ever could.
It taught me that love—real love—is not always safe.
But that doesn't mean it's not worth it.
It taught me that healing begins not when you stop hurting,
but when you start listening to what the hurt is trying to say.
And most of all,
it taught me that being broken by love doesn't mean you're broken beyond repair.
Sometimes, it means your heart is growing.
---
(End of Chapter 1)