"Sometimes we create our own heartbreak through expectation."

The thing that no one ever tells you is that expectation is the foundation for heartbreak, disappointment, and total agony. Unfortunately, this is something that we have to learn on our own, through our own experiences over and over and over again.

We keep our heads up, brush it off, and pretend to convince ourselves that we will never let it happen again. But we all know that is a lie.

In our society, it has become the norm to develop quite an unhealthy relationship with ourselves. We sensationalize this idea that we are our own worst critic, but in conjunction with that, we should also be our biggest cheerleader, some twisted take on a modern-day Dr. Jekel and Mr. Hyde.

I wish someone could have warned me what a dark and twisted place the mind could be before I learned this the hard way too. You begin to question the reality of every situation and the stability of it all. Is this how it really is or are your misinterpreting every last action to create twists and turns in the situation that was never there?

You begin to create expectations, planned and fragile expectations.

My heart is so tired. Tired from the shattering of my unmet expectations, my confusion of reality, and how it continues to send me on the never-ending emotional rollercoaster that I get to call my life.

Expectations are the foundation for heartbreak simply because they are laced into every element of our lives. It does not always have to be the expectations surrounding a relationship with another person that push your heart to break into shards. It can be the unrealistic expectations surrounding the hopes of a career that never panned out as promised, opportunities lost, friendships that have crumbled, and the biggest flop of an expectation: yourself.

As I have begun to transition into adulthood, I have come to realize that heartbreak from these expectations can happen repeatedly and without warning. They surround you in piles of rubble, and you are left with your used up expectations, hopes, and dreams left to try and salvage the one bit of reality you can find and use that to help you guide yourself to salvation, only to twist that and create new, disappointing expectations once again.

What we seem to oversee is that it is no one else but ourselves who creates these expectations and falls for them as if they will have that happily ever after ending. However, in the end, the unforgiving, seething, twisted fate of reality seems to always cause us to see our expectations dissipate and crumble.

Our ability to build ourselves up, only to have it all fall apart, is what causes us to create our own heartbreak.