If you look close enough, you can tell when a girl has had her heart broken. There’s something in the way she smiles, the dull glimmer of her eyes that tells you someone or something has shattered her into a million, tiny pieces. If you look close enough, you can see she’s learning to piece back the fragments; and if you get close enough, you’ll see as to why.
When a girl gets her heart broken, she becomes half-herself. She feels as though the other part of her left with the one she was with or loved or wanted to love. She hates this feeling though and so she’ll make up her mind to do everything in her power to avoid such thinking. She’ll distract herself with people and things and places that she’s never met, tried, or seen before. A broken-hearted girl will do whatever it takes to protect herself from experiencing this crushing, all-consuming wave of despair ever again, but in her shattered heart of hearts know, she’d take the wreckage all again.
Because a girl with a broken heart doesn’t lie down and accept defeat forever. At some point, she gets up from the ashes of memories surrounding her, dusts herself off, and learns to walk away from a mindset that no longer suits her, or brings her happiness. A broken-hearted girl reminds herself of who she is, what she wants, and why she deserves it; and becomes the other half of herself she lost when she lost him.
A girl who’s experienced heartbreak goes out into the world and sees that all she wants she can have; and all she needs is herself to do so. She becomes a vibrant, tantalizing woman who exudes a new-found form of confidence that dazzles the fantasies of on-looking men and sparks the envy of other women around her. She forms a new whole from the hole in her heart.
But even in her mystique and self-assurance, a broken-hearted girl is still filling in her cracks. If you look close enough, you’ll see the chips in her skull from when she tried to knock the thoughts of him out of her head. If you look close enough, you’ll see there are still traces from her fall.
Because a woman who once had her heart broken can learn to forgive, yes, but she will never forget how a broken heart feels. She’ll do anything she can to show herself that next time she won’t be so naïve, or idealistic, or vulnerable, but deep down realize that isn’t the way it goes.
A once broken-hearted woman knows that all wounds, no matter how bad, heal in time and that love will come again. It will hit her like a double-decker bus when she least expects it, perhaps least needs it, but at that point, she’ll be ready. Because when a girl gets her heart broken, she becomes a woman. She learns how to fight her own battles, bandage her own cuts, but most importantly, love herself most of all. So when this woman falls in love again, she won’t let her heart break as it did before. Be rest assured, she’ll be the one to catch her fall.
By Nicole Mormann for ThoughtCatalog