To a friend about Love

Someday, you are going to find someone that you think the world of, you’ll think the best of them no matter what they do, and they’ll probably be beautiful, or at least you’ll think they’re beautiful. You will laugh with them, maybe even cry on their shoulder, share meals, share beds, share stories. 

You will give this person everything, every part of yourself, and they will see you at your most vulnerable You haven’t done that yet. It may be some years before you find a person that is worthy of everything you hold tight to your chest. The numbers, you think, will add up to failure, will comes to negatives. You will put more into the relationship, you think, than the other person has in their head, or in their soul. Someday, they will leave you. They will break your heart and take a piece of you with themselves. It doesn't matter if it’s a candle-holder or a story you told them in confidence, they will keep it with them, a reminder of you, of what could have been. The places you've been with that person will seem desecrated, will seem as if some vandal has torn through and wrecked everything, but they will be exactly the same in reality. Your house, your apartment, whatever you have, wherever you live, will seem huger, and your bed will seem so very empty at the end of all of it. You will smell them, feel them, see them at the backs of strangers for months, maybe even years, if you’re not careful. Simple things like a commercial you both laughed at once, inconsequential things will suddenly be the most important fact or facet of life.

You will break. You will break so very hard you think no one and nothing will ever be able to put you back together. I wish, somehow that I could spare you from that, but someone, someday, is going to do this to you. You say you don’t cry much, but you’ll cry. You’ll scream into a pillow and maybe hit things or break things that person gave you or shared with you. Music will turn to senseless, irritating noise, or to knives that push into your emotions and heart when you least expect it.

And it’ll stay that way. Everything will hurt for weeks, but… But one day. You will wake up and realize the sky is still blue, and birds still sing and the rip in your entire being will start to close a little. Little by little, you’ll find pieces of yourself, scattered across an imaginary floor – wondering, oh, I’d forgotten that I liked the Cure so much, or this Chinese joint still has good noodles. Bit by bit, you will gather up what made you yourself, and put yourself back together. One day at a time, one hour empty of thinking about that person or what they did to you. In time, you will find all of yourself again, save the piece the person took with them – but you might find something else that fits the shape well enough, or a few things. A new hobby, a new friend who enjoys engineering as much as you do, someone with a passion for life who shows you a new way of looking at the world.

I wish I could say this will only happen once. That the first time you get really, truly broken is the last time. It won’t be, but your life, and your strength and the way you deal with the world will be the way you piece yourself into a whole again after everything blows apart. You will survive anything and everything, because you must. Because you doing get a choice.

By the end, we’re all chipped and broken in pieces. Like a clay vessel that’s been dropped too many times, different glazes covering us in a patchwork. The person that finds you here, in that state, when you are no longer completely whole, when bits and pieces of you have been broken and stolen away, that will be the person who is most worth your consideration and your love. The person that returns with all of the parts that you were missing, who spends days upon hours upon years of putting you back together. You may just find in the process that you had the parts for them too, all along. That is who deserves you, in the end, and it will not be the first person that you fall in love with.

You’ll be afraid when you figure this out. Because maybe it hasn't happened yet. I’m giving you a message from your future, and my past. It’s not good for anyone to be alone. I’m not talking about ‘by yourself’ -’by yourself’ is a good thing. Creators, inventors, scientists, introverts, we need time to ourselves, time to work through how vast and intense life can be.

Being alone isn't healthy, though. It’s what friends are for, sometimes the last people in the world you’d expect to have help you. Your default setting is to handle everything alone, and you can’t, not really.

You are not strong enough to stand alone 100% of the time, and that's okay. That's perfectly okay. Someday, someone will find you, broken as you are, and love you for every piece you're missing.