What Survived the Break

Here I am.
1 a.m.
My body is asking for rest, but my eyes refuse to listen.

There is something restless in me tonight, a quiet insistence,
a realization still warm in my chest.
This might be the first time I write about happiness
without feeling like I'm betraying my pain.

I haven't been okay lately.
Life didn't fall apart.
Only the part where love lives.

Grief found me anyway.
It settled into my days,
made a home in my chest.
I learned how to mourn without permission,
how to ache without an ending.

So I ran from it.

I built routines like walls.
I tried to rewire my thoughts,
distract my heart, outrun the feeling.

Anything,
as long as I didn't have to sit with it.

I wouldn't have survived this without my friends.
They didn't try to fix me.
They didn't rush my healing.
They simply stayed.

They let me spill the same stories,
again and again,
like repetition might finally soften the truth.

They celebrated the smallest victories.
"Today, I washed the dishes!"
A small sentence.
A monumental act.

When crying feels like the only language you know,
choosing anything else is an act of rebellion.

Yesterday, I cleaned my room.
I folded times into piles, 
sorted memories by weight.
I changed the sheets.
I washed what had been holding me.

I threw away the photograph of us
and felt no grief.
Only the relief of breathing again.

Healing didn't arrive gently.
It arrived like a sudden clearing,
an unannounced strength.

And somewhere between dust and silence, I understood:

I have to live.
Not perfectly.
Just honestly.

I want to be here
for the people who love me without needing to say it out loud
I love them.
In the way that stays.

And I learned this too:

To be loved by me is not a small thing.
I love with my whole body.
With open hands.
With a heart willing to break
if that's the cost.

Today, I'm grateful
for every heartbreak I've carried in my 28 years.

Because each one proves that I loved.
And love,
even when it leaves
is never nothing.

Those betrayals,
those endings,
those quiet and loud goodbyes
shaped me.

At least I felt chosen once.
At least I was held in someone's heart.

Love is rare.
And I touched it.

I am not afraid to fall again.

Because every love I've known,
no matter how it ended,
meant I was alive.

I laughed.
I learned joy.
I discovered parts of myself I didn't know existed.

So here's to endless forms of love;
friendship, relationship,
every unnamed in-between.

I will let you in.
Even knowing the risk.

Even knowing it may break me.

I will still be grateful
that you came.