Heartbreak: A Secret Strength

Yesterday I took a trip to Jacksonville to visit family and a friend. I always love the car ride up because it gives me a nice, extended period of relaxing time to myself to think and reflect on everything in my life. Music up, windows down, sunglasses on. I began to think about my most current 'break up', if you will, and the emotional roller coaster it has put me though. My mind has been in such a mixed up state, and my heart in pieces. I started to wonder if I am truly that weak. Can I really be so delicate that something so simple as a petty break up could bring me to a screeching halt, leaving me mentally and emotionally wrecked? I started to feel sad for myself. Angry, even, for being so feeble and powerless of my own life and emotions.

But then something struck me. I started to explore a different perspective. What if the ability to feel heartbreak is not a weakness, but actually a strength that one can possess? What if the fact that we can feel heartache is simply proof that we can feel passion and love to an even deeper level than some others? One cannot feel heartbreak over something or somebody that he or she never deeply cared for. It kills me to know that this recent break up of mine so easily lost "feelings" for me, because it only goes to show that he never truly cared for me in the first place. That in a matter of twenty four hours he could go from telling me "I like you" to reiterating that sentence in past tense; "I liked you." Looking at the situation as an outsider it would appear that he is the strong one, and I am the one with weakness. He was the one that broke things off without a drop of his smile and I was left, crying and confused; devastated.

I would like to believe, however, that it is in actuality the other way around. His blank emotions and comfortability in breaking up with me simply revealed his inability to have feelings for me in the first place; to genuinely feel passion. To love. My strength comes out in my tears because they showcase the very fire of feelings I allowed myself to be consumed in. I could feel for him, care for him, want to give things up for him. I could put myself out there, and risk my heart to experiment with the possibility of love. My passion and my heart for him was a strong quality, a respectable quality that I, with my new outlook, take pride in. I now see him as the weaker one in this entire situation. I feel empowered and refreshed, and proud that I obtain such a powerful ability to love, care, and feel passion...an ability that not everybody is so lucky to obtain.