What does it mean to have your heart broken?

Is it when someone doesn't live up to our expectations of them based on their Tinder profile? Is it finding out the person who we've been with for years is cheating on us? Is heartbreak a feeling or is it a state of mind?

Heart break can be anything. It can be a parents' divorce, a pet's death, being rejected by a middle school crush. It can even be the pain swelling in our chest when for the first time you realize we'll never be this or that. We see it in movies and read it in books. We're told that it's soul crushing and nearly impossible to get over. An emotional death sentence.

Oftentimes we think that were safe from heartbreak because of its only a small crush or a silly infatuation. It's a common problem that we underestimate the depth our feelings, and never truly realize what someone means to us before they are out of our lives. It's amazing how quickly a relationship can turn rotten. That betrayal can come out of left field like a giant fist punching us in the gut and leaving us reeling. We never see it coming no matter how many times its happened to us in the past.

When it comes to a broken heart we hear about the tears and the pain, and the hollowness that accompanies that person's absence in our life. And how dumb we are going to feel when we realize how much we've changed for this person without knowing it. It's terrifying to think that we can be so drawn in that we inevitably lost parts of ourselves along the way. There is an anger that accompanies heartbreak that comes from some dark hidden place in our soul and threatens to choke us in the middle of the night. It's wild, it's scary, and if we let it, it can control our lives.

However, what no one tells us about a broken heart is the strength we can find within ourselves to push through it. It's miraculous. Every time we tell ourselves, "I'll never do this again" it's a lie. Want to know why? Because if there's one thing that you should know it's that we need those people in our lives (the ones that only bring pain and disappointment) because without them we would never know that we truly want. We need these friends or significant others to play a vital role in discovering what we need out of our relationships with people, and what we don't want. When you're picking up the pieces make sure your taking notes on what did and didn't work. This is how we can use emotional turmoil to aid us on our never-ending quest for happiness. By using that awful pain to better our lives we are participating in the great balancing act called life.