No one wants a broken heart. In most cases, it changes you forever. You view the world in a different way, one you may have never had access to before. Heartbreak can be physical, mental, and of course emotional pain. It can last a month or multiple years. I wouldn’t wish true heartbreak on anyone, but sometimes, it opens your eyes and changes you for the better.

When your heart really breaks, it shatters. Pieces fly everywhere. It takes everyone a different amount of time to find them and put them all back together. Some people have more help than others, but even when everything is put back in the right place, you might find that it doesn’t feel quite right. That’s because no matter what happens, those pieces won’t fit perfectly like they did before. This heartbreak has changed you forever, whether you like it or not.

So now what? It’s spring but the grass isn’t as green. Your favorite movie comes on but the ending doesn’t seem right. You even eat your favorite food and find it bland. Face it, life isn’t the same. The only thing to do is pick up those pieces, one by one, and keep them in the places you love most.

I can feel at home almost anywhere and I realized that it’s because there are little bits of my heart all over the place. There’s a piece buried in the sand on Ft. Meyer’s Beach that I left during one of my vacations. There’s another somewhere on route 64 in the Mountains of West Virginia that I flung out the window during a road trip. A couple are in Linden, Tennessee where my brother and I spent time with our grandparents during our summers when we were kids. One I left in a random hotel lobby in Louisville, Kentucky where my travel volleyball team stayed for two nights.

A smushed piece is plastered to the floor of my high school gym, crushed by all the volleyball players diving for the ball. There’s a piece shoved into the corner of the pantry of the coffee shop where I worked my senior year.

One is in my high school, running the underclassmen and working half the day. There are two pieces in Davenport, Iowa. One with my brother, probably locked into his apartment while he studies. Another is down the street, shoved into my friend’s volleyball bag while she practices. There’s two pieces in dorm buildings; one in Normal, Illinois and another in Urbana, Illinois. One is immensely far away. It wanders the streets of Savannah, Georgia with a girl who draws in coffee shops and sits on park benches, listening to The 1975 and working her hands numb.