03 April 2014: I told myself don't get attached, but in my mind I play it back...

Do you ever have those few people in your life who have previously treated you so badly, drained you from so many tears you didn’t know you could possibly cry, kept you up all hours of the night thinking and worrying…but still you can’t feel a constant stream of hate towards them even though you feel they strongly deserve it? They are sometimes the people that others warned you about, or that your gut feeling said not to go there but when it comes to love and feelings the brain stops working and the heart takes over.

With love and the person you are in a relationship with, I believe there are two extremes…either pure happiness or heartache. With or without love people feel these emotions even just thinking about it. Those without love feel heartbreak because all they can think about is the love they desire. And those with love are either so genuinely happy that they have found their soul mate and in this case a heart ache is a positive thing from loving too much, or their heart is aching because they are broken on the inside from secretly knowing that the love they have is not right and not meant to be but they can’t speak these words for fear of what might happen once they do. The heart knows what it feels before the brain realises it.

Thinking about your love (or lack of it) can either keep your world spinning around or stop it completely. It’s the difference between a red and green light, heaven and hell, a birth or a death. You can either feel the butterflies of a happy nervousness or heart ache because you love someone so much and can’t believe they’re yours, or the butterflies of dread and heart ache that the person you are with is not right for you or because you aren’t with the person you wish could have fall in love with you.

In my experience, those who hurt you, break you. It may only be for a few days, a few months or a few years. First comes shock, then sadness: the days of numbness and the nights of crying. Anger follows on from that and if you are lucky, happiness from the thankfulness that what you had is over and you are able to move on. Unfortunately for me, after the anger happiness doesn’t come straightaway. I tend to lean back towards the sadness and go into a state of depression. This has happened to me twice. The first time was only a slight, hardly noticeable stage of depression but the second and most recent time had me so far deep into a hole my thoughts and feelings had dug myself into that I couldn’t get myself out of. Or maybe it was subconsciously that I didn’t/don’t want to. At first the feeling of depression was something I didn’t realise I had. I thought it was just a normal unhappiness that comes with being treated wrongly and that it would go away in a few weeks. But then I began to realise that this was actually an illness and a type of depression. I didn’t care about anything anymore. Things I used to put so much effort into didn’t have a place in my heart anymore. Friends I used to enjoy being around couldn’t make me feel any happiness. I lived for nightfall when I could crawl into bed, be alone crying silently while listening to sad songs with artists that understood me and lyrics that completely described my thoughts and feelings at the time. Apart from sitting down in the shower, I felt that at night was the only time I could let out my true emotions. I didn’t dare tell anyone how I was really feeling. I’m not an open person at the best of times but I didn’t know if this was because of a fear of judgement and people not understanding and laughing at my thoughts and feelings. I couldn’t bear to have someone laugh or judge how I was feeling, hence the preference to keep quiet and my internal pact to never be so open.

The second guy that broke me was the worst feeling. I don’t know why I always feel so strongly whenever I feel emotions. I am unfortunately extremely sensitive and feel everything so deeply. Strangely enough, I started having feelings for this guy a few months before we ever even spoke. Like my normal self, I crushed from afar. For a few different reasons I tried to ignore my feelings as I didn’t want to fall for him. Starting off it was because a girl I worked with had something going on with him but although I felt he was leading her on and playing with her feelings, she really liked him. I was one of the girls that she spoke to about these problems with him. As I’m not an open book, it was easy to hide my feelings for this guy and stay on her side of the problem. A couple months later they had a big fight and he was looking for someone to talk to. Good old Facebook and its ability to both connect and break up people. He wrote a status complaining that people he spoke to couldn’t hold a conversation or didn’t reply. I had slight hopes when I like his status but tried not to have expectations that he would actually start a conversation with me.

My heart actually stopped when I got the message a few minutes later. It was him asking me something about if I actually replied to messages. And that’s where it began. I think it was about 9 o’clock that night when the conversation started while he was at work and we spoke until 3 or 4am in the morning. I don’t sleep a whole lot but I’ve never stayed up that late talking to someone before. I didn’t even care, I just didn’t want the conversation to end for fear that it would never happen again. But it did. He sent me an inbox again after lunch the next day, and the next…and the next. We talked every day for a while after that. I couldn’t believe that this guy seemed interested in me and wanted to talk to me. He was the complete opposite to me, yet we had similar thoughts. Our pasts were completely different also…you could say he was kind of a stereotypical ‘bad’ boy. But that didn’t matter to me. In my opinion, the past is in the past and it is your future and your intentions that matter. What counts is if people want to change, if they can look back on their past and realise their mistakes and want to make themselves a better person because of them. I guess you could say that I wanted to be the one to help this bad boy. To make him become the person I knew he could be. I didn’t want to change him for my sake, but for his. So that he could appreciate himself and realise that he was someone special. He didn’t see what I saw in him. And all I wanted and still hope for, is that he could. I know we have no future together but I still wish that he can find that person who helps him see what he is. To go beyond what people stereotype him to be from his looks and tattoos. Yes he has imperfections, everyone does, but he has so many beautiful thoughts and values. Number one being family. That means so much to me and my heart melted when I realised it means everything to him also. I wish society could stop judging people from what they see and get to know someone before they label them.

For reasons I don’t understand or even really know about, this guy and I have very little communication nowadays. I believe everything happens for a reason so maybe the reason is that it wouldn’t have worked in the future anyway. Plus he is now moving away which I can’t help but feel slightly saddened about. I have gotten a lot stronger over the past couple of weeks and I think that my feelings towards him are slowly lessening. Which I am very grateful for because being depressed was not a high point of my year. I became so depressed that I used self-harm as a way out. It eased the pain of what I was feeling and caused my thoughts to be put on hold. Drinking also numbed the pain but I didn’t want to have to rely on alcohol or cutting myself to forever pause these feelings. I ended up falling back onto my love for quotes and music. Though they may not have been the most positive words or lyrics, it made me feel as though I wasn’t alone and that I would get through all this. I even went on a date with a different guy a few weeks ago to try and get over all of this but that didn’t go so well. I always seem to go for the guys that are users and only want one thing. I ended up doing more things with him than I normally would have, especially seeing as though it was only a first date but that was because of my depression and lack of caring about anything. All this may seem dramatic but my feelings are either intense or not there at all. And it wasn’t so much him specifically that caused me to become depressed, it was more the fact that I have been hurt by so many things and nothing ever seems to work out. I am constantly being used by guys because I am too nice and trust too much. The consequences of all this is that I now trust no one and always have my guard up.

But you know what the funny thing is? While I was out getting drunk, trying to forget about the latest guy who really hurt me, I ran into the first guy who lead me on. I hadn't seen him for 6-12 months since we stopped talking so I was waiting for a very awkward moment. But after a tiny little bit it was fine and we were acting like we always had! I am so grateful that we could get our friendship back and know that we could still communicate like we did. I have never been able to talk to someone so easily as I can with him and I think that's what made me fall for him in the first place. I am so happy that he has moved on and found himself a lovely girl and I believe they make the cutest couple. I am glad to still be friends with him and don't have any feelings for him anymore. That gives me hope that I can move on and eventually get over the second and latest guy who hurt me.

Now I feel as though I am practically over the main guy who hurt me but then I see a picture of him on social media and my heart hurts again. I think there will always be a little piece of me that likes him no matter how hard I try to move on but I know that in the end I will find that guy that makes me forget all my mistakes. That makes me feel as though everything I have been through was worth it all to discover him. Who won’t judge my past or my mistakes and feelings and instead help me to see the positive of it all. I don’t want to have to rely on a male but I do want to know there is always one there for me, encouraging me to become the best person I can be and who will always be around for cuddles whenever I need them. I cannot wait for the day when I meet that person xx