I don't understand how our fingertips slid from the grasp that once seemed so tight. I will never comprehend how love feels through someone else's eyes. How our hearts with such heavy burdens can find room to hold another. "Time heals all wounds" is the cliche motivator that keeps me alive. That keeps me sane.

As if the hands of a clock can sew up my broken heart or bandage my battle scars. I know pain like I know myself, familiar but still unrecognizable to the outside. I'll search for answers in broken memories. I'll dig up the past from within my head in the hopes of finding something I didn't see before.

A reason, an explanation, a road map to where everything went wrong. Show me where we fell apart. My tears will shatter on broken glass frames that hold our pictures from when we were in love. The salt in my wounds will pour through my veins until there's nothing left but bones.

I wonder all the time if you're hurting like I am. If you feel it too. But how idiotic of me to wonder when you don't care at all. You're sleeping soundly in your bed next to the girl you said had your heart in the end. So why am I pondering what ifs? Why am I still constantly drowning myself with thoughts of what we could have been? Why can I not take control of my own life?

Sometimes, I think about you.

It's been a little over a year, maybe.

The wounds have turned to scars. The thoughts of you have faded but are still there. You show up in my dreams. Seeing you everywhere I turn became a living nightmare. Everything isn't always as it seems. I’m constantly struggling to burrow out of my own head. When I thought our hearts only had room to love each other, I was wrong.

With time, through the cracks in my heart that you left, you leaked out. You made room for so much more than I ever thought possible. I have hobbies and motivations. I have positivity and life. What I once thought I'd never feel again — I gained through losing you.

Finally, I think I can live with how we ended. Without answers. Without explanations and road maps. I can live knowing I gained so much more without you — than I ever have with you.

How do you define “good enough?” So simple yet completely complicated. I think we spend too much time trying to evaluate ourselves from someone else’s view. Constantly struggling with whether or not you’re satisfying your partner’s needs or wants. Always being told that something can be done better can instill that mindset into someone.

No matter how hard we try, no matter what we say or do, nothing ever feels quite “good enough” for anyone else. I think that’s a common misconception for most of us these days. Maybe we should try a little less to be “good enough” for everyone else and start being “good enough” for ourselves.

No one deserves your best more than your own well-being. Your own soul. Your own conscious mind. Because after that’s achieved, then maybe we can be “good enough” for another human being.

I’ll never understand feelings and how they work. How someone can claim to love another, but still feel the want of being tongue-tied with a completely different person. Love is uncontrollable — it can happen fast or be watered through time; it can be a hurricane of disastrous landslides; or it can blossom into something beautiful, like a 7-year-old pine.

A relationship develops like a forest of trees, like the ones I’ve captured in long-ago photographs. They take time to grow. They need water and sunlight and nutrients. They need years to prosper. A relationship needs time to develop; to grow, it needs communication and honesty. It needs healthy motivations and disagreements.

Don’t forget about the storms, though. Even trees need to learn to be strong during the darkness of the rain and the rage of the thunder and the strikes of the lightning. Even trees go through challenges, and sometimes, many of those trees in the forest will fall. Relationships go through their own storms; they’ll be tested over and over, like the forest and the trees. Not all of them will make it.

Those relationships that fail are those that did not grow strong enough, for whatever reason. There will be storms that will test the boundaries of our own desires. There will be storms that test the distance our hearts are willing to go before being set on fire. I’ve never known lust to be a bad thing, but it’s how we respond to our lustful distractions that could send our trees up in smoke.

Thoughtful moments of considering the consequences are what could save us in the end. Love doesn’t have to be meant for one person — it can be dispersed among the forest. However, renewed love can’t mend what’s already been broken.