I don’t believe for one second that there is a human being out there who hasn’t had their heart broken. For some of us, we are lucky and it only happens once. However, for the less fortunate, it happens on a continual basis. I can’t help but let this fact haunt me, but when examining the common denominator in each of my own personal heartaches I realized something: my heart is broken so often because I allow it to be. People all too often allow themselves to play victim after one scarring experience.
The first time you get your heart broken, you don’t see it coming. It blindsides you like a truck barreling through a red light—all of a sudden, you just feel it, and you feel it hard. From this, you grow a thicker skin, learn a little about yourself, and have a little burst of fear the next time an opportunity for someone to show an interest in you arises, whether it be a romantic relationship or even just a friendship. You panic and think to yourself “This is going to go terribly, horribly wrong.” First dates become your worst enemy because you will never forget how much it hurt to have your heart broken that very first time. You forget how to initiate conversation with potential new friends because you don’t know if what you’ll say will come around and bite you in the ass. You will never forget how it feels to have your trust completely shattered, thus letting your anxiety take the front seat and steer your mind very, very far away from your heart.
This is where the vast majority of us make our biggest mistakes. While we are excited to be moving on and talking to someone new, we can’t help but work ourselves up over the possibility that this person might break our hearts yet again; this person might shatter our trust. It’s a hard feat to overcome, this game of putting your heart in someone’s hands and expecting them to be a decent human being.
The problem remains that you’ll truly never know. You don’t know what is going to happen in the next sixty seconds, let alone what will happen over the course of however long you’re going to be interacting with this person. You can’t predict the future, which is why going off of the past is so crippling—you never fully know anything.
With sheer admiration, I quote the classic Hilary Duff film, A Cinderella Story: “Don’t let the fear of striking out, keep you from playing the game.” Don’t let one (or in my case, several) bad person (people) let you become jaded to the endless possibilities of new relationships or even friendships. Take it as a fresh start every time. Never forget what you learned from heartbreak, but never let it keep you from starting over. After all, everyone deserves a fresh start.
