My first heartbreak didn’t kill me. But I thought it would.

I want to tell you about a boy.

We were in high school. We were inseparable in the way that only teenagers can be, completely, catastrophically, breathlessly inseparable. The kind of inseparable where a few weeks apart felt like the end of the world.

I remember one afternoon, sitting together in my bedroom, both of us crying. Actually crying. Mourning the weeks we were about to spend apart.

And then my younger brother appeared at the window.

He looked at us. Two teenagers dramatically weeping over a temporary goodbye. And he burst out laughing. Could not stop. Thought we were absolutely insane.

I was furious. He doesn’t understand. He’s so insensitive.

Now, 30 year old me, want to pick up the phone and call that boy and ask.. what on earth were we thinking? And also quietly admit that my brother was a little bit right. 

But here is what I understand now that I didn’t then.

We weren’t really in love. We were in survival mode.
Both of us were navigating homes that didn’t feel entirely safe. Both of us were carrying things too heavy for teenagers to carry alone. And we found each other in the middle of that storm and grabbed on for dear life. 

That’s what humans do. We find something, a person, a habit, a substance, a distraction and we cling to it because the alternative is sitting alone with the pain. And the pain is unbearable.

He wasn’t my boyfriend. He was my hiding place.
And I wasn’t his girlfriend. I was his escape.

We called it love. But it was an addiction. And like all addictions, it asked more than it gave and took more than it returned.

One rainy day, he called me. 

Of course it was raining. My life has always had a flair for the dramatic.
I was standing outside, already knowing what was coming but praying I was wrong. And then he said the words.

I don’t think we’re good for each other.

The ground tore open. My heart left my body. Everything I had built my sense of safety, gone. 

In one sentence. Washed away, by the rain!
I went to bed that night expecting my heart to simply give out. I genuinely thought I might not survive it.

I did not survive it gracefully. Let me be honest about that. It wasn’t pretty. 
I suffered. I couldn’t cope. I had made him my entire world , my safety, my reason, my proof that I was lovable and when he left he took all of that with him.
Because that’s the cruelest thing about making a person your addiction. They can choose to leave whenever they want. And when they do, you lose everything at once.

I begged him to come back.
I’m not ashamed to admit that now. I begged. On my knees, in my pain, desperate and undone.

But here is what I understand now that I couldn’t see then. 

I wasn’t begging him to love me. I was begging him to save me. I was saying please take this pain and carry it for me. Please come back and be my reason to stay alive.

What a weight to put on another human being.
What a weight to put on anyone.

He said no. Every single time, he said no.
And that no was the greatest gift anyone has ever given me.

Because it forced me to do the one thing I had been running from my entire life, sit alone in my own pain.

Feel it. Face it. Stop outsourcing my survival to someone else.

Because this is the truth: 

Nobody is coming to save you.

Not because people don’t love you. But because your suffering is yours. It belongs to you. It was sent to teach you something that nobody else can learn on your behalf.

And slowly..over days, weeks, months, years. 

 I got up.

I wish I could find him today.
Not to reopen anything. But to hug him and say:

 I am so proud of you. For being braver than I was. For making the hard choice when I couldn’t. For giving me back to myself even when I was furious at you for it.

He was ten steps ahead of me that day.
And the gift he gave me, the suffering I so desperately tried to avoid , turned out to be my greatest teacher.

Suffering is not the enemy.

I know that sounds impossible when you’re in the middle of it. When the ground has fallen away and you genuinely cannot imagine surviving another day.

When you’ve made someone your oxygen and suddenly the air is gone.

But suffering is the most honest teacher we will ever have. It does not lie. It does not soften the lesson to make us comfortable. It holds us there until we are ready to receive what it came to teach.

Sit in it. Feel it fully. Don’t run. Don’t grab the nearest person or thing to soften the blow.

Just sit. And breathe. And trust that you will get up.

Because you will.

I did. And I was convinced, completely convinced that I wouldn’t.

Surprise, surprise.

Still here. Stronger for it. And finally, finally grateful for every hard thing that refused to let me stay small.

— Sushmita