I’m going to tell you the story of the boy who almost broke my heart.

Heartbreak feels exactly as it sounds, as if a literal crack has suddenly emerged, and this vital organ is unexpectedly giving up on life, giving up on you. You think this is the worst kind of betrayal, a stab to the back that nicked your heart in the process. It’s hard, not just at first, but constantly and for a while. You’ll be rehashing old stories and reliving memories for a long, long time. You’ll think it’s your fault, but that you shouldn’t care, because he gave up on us (on you), so why waste your time debating what you could’ve done differently? You will, anyway, because you don’t feel like eating, or speaking, or doing much of anything except thinking about the choices you made that led you here. It's 3 AM on a Tuesday night, the sad song of the week playing in the background. You play endless games of “shoulda, woulda, coulda,” while you listen to the songs you used to sing together. You write so many letters you’ll never send, detailing all of your frustration and guilt and loneliness.

It’s disheartening.

Fast forward a little. You find someone who smiles the same way, but his eyes don’t crinkle just so and his laugh is so much deeper. However, you think that you could get used to it. You think the book the guy sitting across from you on the subway is reading looks interesting. You can imagine sharing bottomless cups of coffee with him, discussing prose. A boy holds a door open for you, and you share that tense, awkward glance of thanking him for the courtesy and lo and behold, he is divine intervention. You catch the eye of the guy across the room and without meaning to, you fall in love with a stranger, just for a little while. No numbers are exchanged, not a single word passes between the two of you … but it feels like dipping your toe in water again and finding it to be less cold than you imagined – something else you could get used to.

Eventually, you find someone who makes you feel this way in countless motions. He is the dependable kind of wonderful that you once thought you could only feel with what’s-his-name. “We can still be friends” was a nice notion when you hoped it would remain true, but alas, he also gave up on that (on you). But now you have new friends and a new sense of self that he cannot break. He can no longer penetrate your reality with your self-inflicted fantasies of him coming to your rescue and subsequent recovery. Because you actually don’t need to be saved. And maybe you didn’t know it at 3 AM on that Tuesday night, but you never did.