I know. I know what you are all going to say: "I'm not broken", "I don't have a problem", "I am okay". These are the same things I tell everyone day in and day out whenever I feel like I'm going to collapse. The truth is that even though some people think I am cold and heartless and basically unbreakable, they have no idea how wrong they are. I am not cold or heartless; I am simply someone who has been hurt so many different times by so many different people that I put on a mask of being "cold and heartless" so people think that what they have done to me means nothing. But in reality, it does.

Every time someone I care about hurts me it's like a piece of my soul chips away and disappears. I know every single one of us have gone through something like this at least once: someone we love very much and who we would trust with our life betrays us and hurts us, and we can literally feel our heartbreak in that precise moment into a million pieces. We can feel our heart drop to our stomach and a sensation that none of us can explain swarms our body - a sense of disappointment. Can you feel it? The memories flying through your head, the feeling of disappointment filling your body, the pain making your heart drop once again, and the tears dwelling up? We have all gone through this, and it's why we're all stronger than we were before.

After we pick ourselves up and move on from this pain, most of us put up a wall that surrounds our heart and our feelings because we do not want to feel this pain again. We don't want to be disappointed, we don't want to be hurt, and we don't want to be heartbroken. This wall lets us keep people outside so that we don't allow them to hurt us, but at the same time we are not letting them in. We are not truly letting them into our lives so that they can teach us new things and show us new things; we end up staying on the outside, and miss out on opportunities and beauty and basically life. If we stay guarded and keep everyone out, at the end of the day the only ones that stay out of everything is us. We don't let people in, so we don't let ourselves into their lives either because we don't want to get attached, so we miss out on getting to know people to levels we could never even dream of, and at the same time we miss out on the opportunity to develop feelings that we cannot even imagine.

I personally tend to push people away and put up a wall every time I meet someone, but ever since I dropped my wall and started letting people in my life has truly changed. I feel more deeply, I laugh more often, and I live life more happily than I ever thought possible.

I know that we've all been broken, and I know how hard it can be to drop the wall and let people in our lives again, but believe me when I tell you that there is nothing better than truly letting people in. Opening up will allow you to grow as a person, because not only will you be able to feel more deeply and live more happily, but you'll learn how to do so by yourself. The truth about happiness is that you can't get it from anyone or anything else but yourself; if you become happy by yourself, then there is no way in hell you'll be miserable ever again. And when you're actually happy, there is no way that you'll ever be broken again; yes, you will get hurt, but you will get up and shake it off because you don't need whoever hurt you.

I know it's hard to drop the wall. I know it's scary. But if we don't do it then we will miss out on so many different things in life that we might as well be dead. What is life without feelings? What is life without getting attached and fearing to lose someone? What is life without others making it more special? It's time to drop the wall, heal, and be happy. It's time to liberate ourselves.