This photo was captured and provided by Jake Basset, owner of Media View Creative. Click on the photo for the official website.
I thought for a while that forever had found me. He was the first person that I ever loved. He could stop a heartbeat with his smile. He wore soccer sweatshirts and loved music. And he loved me. For awhile. I have been told that I am a hopeless romantic and I suppose in some ways that is true, but I wasn’t until him. Until I collapsed in a pile of freshly fallen snow, laughing so hard that my ribs hurt, trying to understand what the new foreign feeling was that was fluttering in my chest. Love happened to me slowly, and then all at once. Like the light sprinkle of snow that suddenly seemed to turn the whole world white.
I am not sure that I ever recovered from the chill of that snowfall. Because even now the memories come flooding back.. my own little winter. I get afraid sometimes that I will never find it again. That I will never feel the way that I did then. To love truly and simply, and to be loved in return. Because that’s the thing about snow. It always melts.
Love has never been simple for me. It has always come with a very painful price. I open up my raw beating heart to someone new and it always ends the same. Another scar. Another painful memory. Another reason to believe that real love is only available to a select few. It always leaves me asking the same questions. Why is it that some are so lucky in love and some of us are quite the opposite? What’s the difference in the equation that ends in a white dress and the promise of forever or a pile of broken cries on the kitchen floor?
I will be the first person to admit my demons. I don’t let go easily. When I let my walls down, I fall fast and hard. And when I care about someone I usually let myself care too much too quickly. Then I end up in that all too familiar place. Feeling the shame of letting go of a piece of myself too fast. The shame of trying to force the snow to fall in the dead of Summer. Ashamed of my heart, which feels like it beats differently than everyone else’s. Ashamed of trying to hold on to something which wasn’t ever mine to begin with.
I use to think that I don’t know love anymore. I just know broken glass and shattered dreams. I know half-written sentences and stories that have no ending. But that’s not true. I think the ones that have been broken know how to love better than anyone else.
I watched Must Love Dogs for the first time the other night. Crazy I know – seeing that that movie came out ages ago. The main guy in the movie, John Cusack, stops at one point after telling Diane Lane about how his ex-wife broke his heart and he said, “you know, I think your heart grows back bigger.” I can’t help but to believe that is true. That your heart holds more capacity to love after it’s been broken.
I can’t say I am the same girl I was that was standing in the snow that night. Life moves on. Hearts heal and love fades, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth something. Sometimes love isn’t meant to stay. Sometimes love is just meant to whirl in swirl your life around, teach you a lesson and swirl right out. And that’s okay. Because as much as it hurts when you have to let go of something that was as much a part of you as the blood rushing through your veins, you will always come out stronger. The heart beating in your little chest will feel irreparable, for a time… until one day… it isn’t. Until one day you wake up good as new. Ready for winter once again.
This blog post is dedicated to someone close to my heart who I watched grow up. You know who you are. Broken hearts are hard, but beautiful girl you will you love again. I know because I did:) And it will be that breathtaking, caught up in a snowstorm kind of love.
