-Question submitted by Anonymous

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Dannielle Says: 

Take it slow. That’s it. You will rebuild slowly, you will cope a little better each day and you will be sad for a while, but eventually you’ll be happy and you’ll grow and you’ll feel so strong and wonderful.

Heartache is the WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD, you feel lost and confused and sometimes worthless. You feel like you can’t breathe, music is both the best and worst thing in the world and you’re certain that no one understands what you’re going through.  We do know what you’re going through, there are thousands of people reading this question and feeling for you, hurting with you and wishing for your happiness. 

Take time to yourself, find things that you love that are JUST for you. Spend time with your friends, catch up with people you haven’t talked to in years. Go to the movies by yourself, read three books at once and get the characters confused, start a video journal, write, take kick boxing classes. Do anything and everything you can to feel a little bit better. Take it slow, don’t be afraid to cry and remember that there is someone out there who will love you harder than you could have ever imagined being loved. 

Kristin Says:

Dannielle just made me cry.  THAT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL.  And so goddamn true.

Time is everything in this life.  Right now, you have to focus on breathing, on getting up, on crying it out, writing it out, and accepting that, right now, you feel like you are stuck in a dark well that won’t ever see sunlight.  I know that feeling.  It feels endless and overwhelming.  There is no reasoning with it.  It is a beast of a thing.

It is a finite thing.  I promise you.

My advice, always, in these situations, is to have patience with yourself, and to treat your body like a machine.  As far as being patient goes, you have to forgive yourself for hurting, you have to accept that you are in a difficult time in your always-changing, ever-shifting life.  As far as your body-as-machine goes, you have to literally force yourself to do the things that your logical brain knows are healthy for your heart and mind.  Exercise.  Write.  Pray.  Meditate.  Take yourself out to dinner.  Start a garden.  Do any or all of those things, but keep doing them, and don’t stop until all of a sudden you catch yourself wanting to do them, wanting to feel better, wanting to move forward.

I wouldn’t lie to you.  It hurts like hell on earth, but it passes, and beautiful and unexpected things are always a possibility that exist just around the corner.