It hurts. Heartache hurts. It's a known fact. This sensation sprints through our bodies and into our chests, finding its way to the muscle that gives us life — the house of our soul — and it tortures it. The pain can be different for us all. For example, I feel like my heart is being wrapped in a straight jacket, slowly forcing me to lose oxygen. It sounds lovely, I know. However, when my love is taken for granted or ripped apart right in front of my very eyes, there's that choking feeling. I cry. I weep. I beg for it to stop. I want to stop caring, stop loving, stop feeling. Numbness...that's what I desire. A numb heart is better than a raw and battered one.

I used to think that if I just turned off my feelings, turned off my need to care, I would be happy. I wouldn't be tortured. I would be content with a strong heart surrounded by an even sturdier wall. It was a great idea.

However, I never looked at the alternate side to a heart. I was only thinking that if I ceased in my caring, held my love in, then I wouldn't be hurt. What if my not caring and closed off personality was actually hurting other people's hearts, though? What if I was hurting the people I love because I was afraid of loving them?

Also, what if I was numb but not restoring the damage to my heart? Just because I couldn't feel my heart did not mean it wasn't bleeding. With my decision to stop caring, I just put up a wall. I did not take the time to sew my heart back up and move on in life. I was stuck.

I was selfish.

Here I was, scared about my pain when in reality, I was still in pain and causing others to be in distress and be under their own kind of torture. I was dragging them down to where I was before I tried numbing my feelings. I was going to make them numb their feelings, and others and I feared may start a movement; people so afraid to hurt that they hurt others and still harm themselves without knowing it.

So I started taking my wall down easier. When things hurt, when people bit, I took it in stride and cried because it felt right to. Then I addressed myself, dressed my wounds and moved on. I started caring about the small things and working my way up to the big things once again. I took solace in the fact that me loving the way my friends laugh could not hurt me. I was loving the small parts of complex people and it was working.

Soon, I started loving people again. I started to trust again. I stitched myself up and just went with it. And yes, I was let down. I got back up. I loved people again. I will keep loving people. I will keep being an optimist in people. We are meant to love before hurt one another. However, I will keep getting hurt by people. But that's the thing ... people let you down. You let people down too. It makes us human. It makes us strong. It makes us love even harder. If you don't feel heartache, how can you ever expect to be full?