Love...or something like it

'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.


Everyone's heard that saying at one point or another. It's frequently tossed out to comfort a newly single acquaintance, usually paired with the equally eloquent "There's plenty of other fish in the sea." To those that have spoken this line in the context of relationships, if you believe it, you've never felt love. I understand what loneliness can do to someone, how it can feel not having a counterpart by your side to progress through life, lift you up when you're down, and other cliches. But I can say for a fact, from personal experience, and from observing others, the feeling of being sans love is nothing compared to finding that love, and then losing it. It's not possible it can come close. Even if you take a person that is so lonely they're hopelessly depressed; if you were to give them love, and then take it away, they would sink into unimaginable depths.

Everyone has experienced loneliness. No one has their perfect match throughout their entire life, we've all been jealous of seeing the popular couple walk around school/the neighborhood/elsewhere and wondered why it couldn't be you. It's not easy, but it's not an impossible feeling to deal with. It's always there, but you manage to go about your daily routine sans interruption. But having that perfect level of happiness, knowing that no matter how bad your day was, you'll have that someone to talk to, there'll always be that person that won't turn on you, is one of the most amazing feelings in the world. And getting accustomed to, and then losing it, is an emptiness I would wish on very few people. The only way that I can describe losing love is being eaten alive from the inside. Of course, the common metaphor is your heart breaking. But it goes far beyond that. The normal routine you'd been accustomed to, having that person there to talk to or see, all of a sudden has been turned on its head. Your mind doesn't know what to do, because usually when you had a problem or something to talk about, that was the person you'd talk to. It's also the only thing you can think about. You wonder what caused it, did you make a mistake somewhere, did you take something for granted, what was the cause, and how can you redeem yourself? Everyone tells you it's best to move on, but you can't. Your body, your mind, they aren't ready to move on. You'd prefer to take a million steps backwards to fix the situation than to take one step forwards and move on with your life. You stop eating, you stop caring about anything else. You don't see your friends, you don't talk to anyone, you become a literal shell of yourself. Everyone on the outside sees you, they see a person standing there, the person they recognize from so many memories. But inside, you're hollow. The biggest part of your life just up and disappeared, and you don't know how to react. It's a swirl of emotions and some people get through it, and some don't. But trust me when I say that if you're still waiting for your first love, you're better off.