How Our Hearts Break

by L.K. Reid

People often said that breakups were some of the hardest things they went through in their life, but what about breakups between friends? What about all the memories you made together? What about all those late nights when their eyes were the only light holding you upright?

He was never mine, but losing him felt like thunder cracking through the sky, shattering the peace and quiet. He shattered my heart, and I couldn’t exactly blame him—he never knew.

You never know when the last time that the person you loved more than most other people in your life would become a stranger.

Sometimes when you love somebody, you decide to turn a blind eye to all those bad attributes they had, because the good ones were the only ones you cared about.

Wasn’t it fucked up that we spent our entire lives already having everything we ever needed, yet we never saw it until we lost those things?

Now you’re just a boy wearing the face of a person I used to know. Now you’re just a painful reminder that people we love, more often than not, don’t love us in the same way.

“Not everybody you meet will be worthy of your love, but I know better now. I know that I shouldn’t be wasting my time on friends who want nothing to do with me, and on boys who could bring nothing but a broken heart and years filled with pain.”

I would rather live without him, than have just one-half of him, while some other girl, that maybe didn’t even know him the way I did, got all of him.

Some people had tragedy engraved on their bones, and no matter what, they could never run away from it.

I hoped and hoped and hoped that one day, by some miracle, he would look at me and see the girl he could love as more than just a friend.

“I can’t breathe without you, Angel. You’re in everything I do. In every single thought, every single song. I’ve missed you more than the sun misses the moon.”

Nobody ever tells you that when you lose someone who was still alive, it hurt more than if they were dead. No one ever tells you that seeing the person—your person—go on with their life, while you sit in the corner, all alone, wishing for time to go back, splits your heart in two.

Some people spend their lifetime searching for that special someone, and I’d found her in the middle of the darkest period of my life. She was my beacon of light, my beginning and my ending.

No matter what—pain, love, eternity, or just a blip in time—I would still choose her. If I had to go through the same thing over and over again, I would still choose to know her, to meet her, to love her.

“I didn’t want you to suffer, too,” she cried out. “I didn’t want you to see me like this, you know? I wanted you to remember me how I used to be, not this broken shell, getting eaten from the inside out.”

I didn’t want to do something that would end up in the two of us never talking again. I was afraid of losing you, but I never realized how much I was hurting you.”

I wish that land really existed, you know? I wish that we could just jump into the pond and travel somewhere far away from here, where we could live forever.”

She was always the stronger one. She was my anchor, and I feared that the world without her in it wouldn’t be the same.

Life and death were like two lovers, always dancing around each other, but never touching, missing each other forever, until one day they got to be together again.

I once read that a person knew when they were going to die. Something came into their soul telling them that it was time, and they just knew.

“You promised me forever, Soph. We were supposed to be together forever. Please. Don’t go. Don’t go where I can’t follow you, baby. Please.”

She was my compass, and living without her felt like living in a world without a purpose.