Holding Onto Heartbreak (Ciera)

As I write this, part of me feels stupid. I question whether this is me using writing as a coping mechanism again or if the feeling of heartbreak will ever go away.

“Time will heal”, as the saying goes. Although, after five and a half years, the wound in my heart still feels as ripe as the day it opened.

I was a seventeen-year-old countryside girl who didn’t know the meaning of love, floating through life with the belief that to discover it was my destiny. I’d read about it in so many books, sang along to beautiful ballads in my room (but only when my parents were out), inked its sentiments of warmth within my poetry. And then, it found me.

Ice-blue eyes, slightly tanned skin and a floppy fringe. This sounds cliche but perhaps that appealed evermore so to the hopeless romantic within me. I felt a genuine physical sensation in my chest when I first made eye contact with this man, and the rest was history. I knew that he would always occupy the depths of my heart.

A mere few months pass and I’m more unhappy than I had ever known. My affections are neglected and unappreciated, so I had to let him go.

Part of me is proud of my younger self for having the strength to leave when she felt undervalued. Yet, little did she know that over five years on this man would remain a part of her life.

For a while we tried to fix things – for over two years, in fact. For a while after that he’d try to reach out just for the attempt at friendship. I would push him away, saying that I could not heal if I were friends with someone I still loved.

“I don’t know what keeps going wrong”, he’d said. At times I wondered to myself: “Neither do I”.

Tonight I tried to call him. I always thought that the answer to my heartbreak induced pain was to push this person away as he was the source. However, after so much time has passed, I’ve realised that his absence hurts me more. Regardless of whether we’re in or out of touch, the kind of pain that losing our connection caused is one that will stay.

We were young, nothing absolutely major went wrong. This was a person who clearly loved – and still loves – me, who didn’t know how to handle it at seventeen.

The last words he said to me, at twenty-two, were: “I wish I had kissed you the last time that we met”. Love is still there within us, holding on, even if it’s not meant to be.

I don’t believe in the term “moving on” in the definition of losing a memory or person entirely. But rather, as time passes, your thoughts and feelings mature to better cope day to day.

I’ll always have love for this person, and it hurt when my call went to voicemail. However, despite my heart holding on to the heartbreak, I’m learning to live each day for myself one by one – and that’s okay.

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