We've all experienced some sort of heartbreak. Some loss. Whether we felt it from the guilt of leaving our partners, or the pain we felt when our partners had left us. Truly caring for someone only to part with them later is more emotionally harmful than anything else on this earth. Mere days ago, I was informed by my dearest friend that my partner wanted to leave me. "You're single now," he told me. "He's upset with you, and he's tired of what you're doing." I felt my world come crumbling down from those few words. I would have understood if I had betrayed him in some way, such as cheating or lying about something, but all I had done was keep to myself in troubling times. I refused to rely on him emotionally in the case of him one day disappearing from my life, and thus did not burden him with my problems. Then I was told this. I can only faintly remember the last time I felt this way. "Okay," I simply replied with a deadpan expression. Yet deep down inside I was crying--screaming--and wondering why he'd leave for such a reason. Even before I began to write this I laid in bed and nearly bursted into tears at the mere thought of being without him. It hurts. After all we have been through together. It truly pains me inside. Now I pass by him in the halls, not daring to take a single glance in the fear that I may just break down once again, and ignore his very existence. On my way home I start feeling that emotion bubble inside of me, and it takes everything in my being not to explode right there in the middle of the street. If I must be honest, I feel very much at fault for this. If I just wasn't so stubborn and was more open. If I had just gave a more clear explanation to him on why I choose to spend time with only a select few people rather than him. If I had just told him upfront "I feel depressed, and I need some time away from us so I can collect myself again" or "This is just something that happens occasionally. I promise it'll go away soon. Just please be patient with me, I beg of you" or anything along those lines. Then maybe none of this would have happened. I wouldn't have the need to cry myself to sleep late at night. I wouldn't have the need to nearly collapse into tears each time I see his face. I wouldn't have the need to fake my hatred towards him, and mask my pain with fury. I wouldn't have the need to forcefully collect my being and throw myself onto another person just to forget him. This whole situation could have been avoided if I just said something more explicit and obvious to him. Then at times I also blame him. He understood, knowing me for about two years or more, that I prefer to stay away from most and hang out with very few when I am in these little moods. Yet he whined and chose to leave me over this. In fact, it was he in the beginning who would leave me to my own devices. It was he who would abandon me when I needed him most. It was he who would tell others "They're fine. Just leave them alone for a little while. They'll get out of this funk eventually." So why is it now, out of all times, that he is so furious for me simply understanding that it's better for me to deal with this on my own? Why is it that now, when I am the one who decides who I am with when I have these feelings, he gets upset? Who have given him these unspoken rights to control who I do and don't hang around when I am in no mood to deal with people including him? These emotions of mine conflict, and it hurts both my heart and my head to think of this. I know not of the future, but I do hope that someday all of this will be mended. I shall either join with him to figure this all out, or cut him from my life in its entirety and move on. Only time can tell what my choice will be.

We've all experienced some sort of heartbreak. Some loss. Whether we felt it from the guilt of leaving our partners, or the pain we felt when our partners had left us. Truly caring for someone only to part with them later is more emotionally harmful than anything else on this earth. Mere days ago, I was informed by my dearest friend that my partner wanted to leave me. "You're single now," he told me. "He's upset with you, and he's tired of what you're doing." I felt my world come crumbling down from those few words. I would have understood if I had betrayed him in some way, such as cheating or lying about something, but all I had done was keep to myself in troubling times. I refused to rely on him emotionally in the case of him one day disappearing from my life, and thus did not burden him with my problems. Then I was told this. I can only faintly remember the last time I felt this way. "Okay," I simply replied with a deadpan expression. Yet deep down inside I was crying--screaming--and wondering why he'd leave for such a reason. Even before I began to write this I laid in bed and nearly bursted into tears at the mere thought of being without him. It hurts. After all we have been through together. It truly pains me inside. Now I pass by him in the halls, not daring to take a single glance in the fear that I may just break down once again, and ignore his very existence. On my way home I start feeling that emotion bubble inside of me, and it takes everything in my being not to explode right there in the middle of the street. If I must be honest, I feel very much at fault for this. If I just wasn't so stubborn and was more open. If I had just gave a more clear explanation to him on why I choose to spend time with only a select few people rather than him. If I had just told him upfront "I feel depressed, and I need some time away from us so I can collect myself again" or "This is just something that happens occasionally. I promise it'll go away soon. Just please be patient with me, I beg of you" or anything along those lines. Then maybe none of this would have happened. I wouldn't have the need to cry myself to sleep late at night. I wouldn't have the need to nearly collapse into tears each time I see his face. I wouldn't have the need to fake my hatred towards him, and mask my pain with fury. I wouldn't have the need to forcefully collect my being and throw myself onto another person just to forget him. This whole situation could have been avoided if I just said something more explicit and obvious to him. Then at times I also blame him. He understood, knowing me for about two years or more, that I prefer to stay away from most and hang out with very few when I am in these little moods. Yet he whined and chose to leave me over this. In fact, it was he in the beginning who would leave me to my own devices. It was he who would abandon me when I needed him most. It was he who would tell others "They're fine. Just leave them alone for a little while. They'll get out of this funk eventually." So why is it now, out of all times, that he is so furious for me simply understanding that it's better for me to deal with this on my own? Why is it that now, when I am the one who decides who I am with when I have these feelings, he gets upset? Who have given him these unspoken rights to control who I do and don't hang around when I am in no mood to deal with people including him? These emotions of mine conflict, and it hurts both my heart and my head to think of this. I know not of the future, but I do hope that someday all of this will be mended. I shall either join with him to figure this all out, or cut him from my life in its entirety and move on. Only time can tell what my choice will be.

Love is a feeling that is indescribable. It's like soaring through the sky, your wings spread wide and free like that of a bird's, on a clear and beautiful day over a city with thousands of lights. It's like running through a field and feeling the wind blow through your hair and hitting your face as you race by. It's like waking up after having the most wonderful of dreams, and nothing during the day can stop you from smiling until you return to a blissful sleep later in the evening. You want to find the words for it, but none can possibly be enough to express what you feel in these moments. It's the same with love--as cliche as that sounds--and it's one of the greatest things to feel in your lifetime. It's more than lust. More than joy. More than anything else. All I've desired since I was a child was love, to fall in love and stay in it, and after so long I have to come realize that I'm experiencing just that. After years of disappointment, misery, rejection, heartbreak, and loss I have fallen in love once more and I couldn't be happier. In the mornings I wake up and go on with my dreadful day, dressing myself and doing early chores, before leaving the rest to my siblings. As I walk out the door I am stressed by the potential of missing my bus and having to wait nearly half an hour before the next can arrive. I sneer at the others on the bus, men and women and children alike who exchange a similar dirty glance with me, before taking my seat (typically in the rear) and wait to arrive at my stop, ignoring all around me as I stare out the window with my earbuds blasting at full volume to block them out. I arrive at the stop and quickly jump onto the second bus, repeating the same process again, before getting off and walking to my school. I stand before the doors for some time waiting for him to arrive, disappointed each time I look up at a new arrival only to see a stranger I barely converse with or a close acquaintance I normally do not speak to, until finally I see him approach. Feeling the heat rise to my face I turn my head and pretend I saw not a thing. I don't want him to know I expected him to arrive. He then suddenly hugs me, greeting me with a simple "hello" typically, before returning to his group of friends I saw come earlier. I wait until they open the doors for the day to begin smiling to myself for a brief moment. Lunch later arrives and I come up from the staircase, out of breath and exhausted beyond belief. I take a break at our table before watching him intently as he jokes about. Each time he glances back I turn my head once more, pretending to find the sky outside far more interesting than the remaining morons in the cafeteria. He then takes a seat next to me and pulls me close to himself, and I am content once more. The day then ends and we walk side-by-side together to the bus. I have recently been walking him to his building to spend just some more time with him before I head back to the hell my family calls home, where food is scarce among us and my mother works too long to notice the little things anymore. We are forced to be our own caretakers in a house where only half are old enough to do things on their own while the rest must wait for our mother to return late in the evening. I occasionally come up with him and join his family when I have enough time before taking my leave back home. Despite what I expect to find as I walk into that door to the right on the 10th floor, I keep the smile I wear around him in hopes it'd help get me through the afternoon until my blissful sleep numbs my sorrows once again. This man has made me feel more than my family, friends, and interests ever could. This man has given me enough reason to keep breathing every single day. He gives me reason to smile, to laugh, to just enjoy my life as it is. This is something I have not felt in years, and I never want it--or him--to leave me again. I want to spend the rest of my life with him. I want us to go on through our college years together, perhaps not in the same school, and come out stronger than we were before. I want us to achieve our dreams, get married, make the sweetest moments of love later in the night, have a loving home and family, grow old together until we both die peacefully, and just move past the pain we endured as children as two souls unite into one beating heart that goes on into forever--a single eternal flame that never burns out. Yet, at the same time, I have an unrelenting fear that he'd grow bored. He'd find me disgusting, childish, and leave me for another. While I will not stop him from perusing his dreams and wants the pain will still be there. The pain I felt so long ago when I had lost my dear Tony, and when I heard my lover had slept with my dearest friend nearly a year ago, will be there again, and I fear that I will not survive it this time. Being in love is the greatest feeling one can ever have. Yet, it comes at a painful price. Can I truly ever pay it?

How many of you grew up without someone who was supposed to be there for you? How many of you lost friends as you grew older, or people you just really cared about? How did it make you feel? Age 3. My earliest memory was waking up in a bed that seemed familiar, but I could not figure out where I was. I left the mattress and explored the apartment that I strangely knew like the back of my hand. I came face-to-face with an elderly couple. I had called the woman my mother, and the man my grandpa. I did not know why. I assumed they were my parents. It wasn't until later that I gained a memory I can still recall: meeting my biological mother and brothers. I know I must have met them before, but my mind at that time had deemed them as strangers claiming to be my family, and all I can think was "why wasn't I raised with you guys?" Age 5. My mother took me and my little brother to a strange place past a fire station (I now recognize it was a police station). We stood there for a whole boring hour until a strange man wearing a black baseball cap and dark sunglasses walked in. He spoke to my mother before coming over to us. He introduced himself as our biological father. I accepted it without question. I expected him to be in my life again like my mother. However, after a few months of constant visits, we stopped going to the station to meet him and I didn't see him for a long time afterwards. By age 6 I began to wonder why he wasn't with my mother anymore, and by age 9 I had almost forgotten he existed until he finally returned to us again. This cycle continues to this very day. Age 10. I now only have a selective group of friends. We were a group of four with a couple of extras we liked hanging out with individually. Then one of us left, never to come back. I can barely remember her face now. Age 12. I was in one of the best relationships of my life. Granted, I had wronged someone, and I regret it to this very day. But we were happy together. That was until someone took him away from me. He went on to a better life (I can only hope so at least), and the night I heard the news I had lost all faith in God and the angels above. I had run back to the man who I had wronged, and in turn he did twice what I had done to him. My love life afterwards had been rocky and unknown. To this day I still refuse to worship such a god, but that boy gives me a hope that perhaps there is an afterlife. He sure as hell deserves the best of them. Age 14. I had made the biggest mistake of my life, and everyone I had once thought cared about me left. Friends turned on friends, relationships broke and mended, and I was shown a pain unlike any other that still haunts me to this very day. In the end, some of them came back and we promised a new life for ourselves. However, the betrayal has me weary and I still cannot trust him with everything I know and love. Not with my whole heart anyway. Age 15. These experiences still mess with my head. As I lay in bed late at night, I am kept awake until the early hours of dawn with these memories playing in my head. The pain becomes hurt, which in turn becomes rage, and eventually settles to sorrow if not quenched with revenge, and it all returns to a stinging numbness that makes me feel both everything and nothing at the same time. I fear closeness to those I care for most in the case of them betraying and leaving me behind just like all the others. As my 16th birthday approaches, I cannot help but wonder how different my life may have been if the choices we all made weren't the ones we had chosen. Would it be better? Would it be worse? Would I still think of the "what ifs" in the end? What is it like? What am I like? Will I ever know, or be kept in this darkness until my dying days? Would I ever be the patient and trusting person I hope to be one day, the person I am working to become, that everyone loves? Would I continue to be a shame to my family and an embarrassment to them, or would I give them nothing but pride? So much could have been different, but would I want it that way?

Do you remember your first love? Were you filled with butterflies in your stomach? Did you blush around them, or stammer when trying to speak to them? Did you dream of a life with them, getting married and having children together? Many of us often remember our first lovers or crushes. Some may regret being with them, some miss that experience with them, and some never got to be with them. Now that last part might not seem important. However, consider this: How many times has it happened? Most of you might say, "Well, only a few times. I didn't have that many crushes growing up." That's perfectly normal. Some people fall easier than others.Yet, can you imagine what it must be like if you had so many crushes that you can barely remember them all? About 110. I have had 110 crushes, some of them on the same person multiple times. That's just a quick estimate. It might have been more, maybe slightly less, but can you guess how many of them liked me back? Only about 15--despite dating 16 people, one had fallen for me but I only wished to give them a chance because of our beloved friendship--had fallen for me as well. Do you know how many were loyal to me until the very end, and vice versa? Only three. Tony: boy #1. Cause of breakup? Died tragically in a hospital at 3 in the morning during late August two weeks after we started dating. He was shot attempting to save a man being robbed, received surgery, and his body rejected the transplant causing him to die. I was only around 11 or 12 at the time. Bryan: boy #2. Cause of breakup? We slowly drifted apart after nearly a year of being together. I don't know what went wrong, but we just stopped talking. We mutually agreed it was for the best if we saw other people. Finally, boy #3: Dani. My current partner. We had dated once before, back in my freshman year and his sophomore year. It was less than ideal and I left after almost a month. We continued to be friends after that. Then, late into my sophomore year after a traumatic event, something had sparked again. I'm not sure how or why, nor do I know now, but in early spring I started to develop feelings for him again. I had held it off for a good few months believing it was just a fluke. I told myself, "There's no way. He's just being nice, that's all. It'll go away eventually like it always does." Yet, the feelings never left. They grew and grew until I started to see signs that I had been trapped with possibly unrequited love for him. I remember how rumors began to spread, and he had admitted to them, that he had his eyes on a particular girl in our friend group. Shamefully I admit that I was outraged by this. It had happened so many times before, and I was a fool to continue to love those people for prolonged periods of time. Like my childhood friend, and a girl we both knew from another school on the campus grounds. I didn't want to be hurt again. So I continued to push those feelings away. They didn't stop. They pushed back, and I was forced to feel this way for so long. Then I had made a decision: sink or swim. He either loved me back or he didn't. I had yet taken another unsure dive into an unfamiliar lake in which I had drowned in many times before. I wrote him a small note at first, telling him my feelings in French. He returned to me and asked me why. I could not give a proper response. We left it off at that. A day or so later I gave him a longer note explaining in full detail what I meant by those small words. He took it, read it, and said not a word to me afterwards. I had believed myself to be rejected, and like many times before I was heartbroken. "What else did you expect?" I told myself that evening. "Of course he doesn't want you back, idiot! Why even bother?" I had prepared myself to be content with the loneliness I felt that day. That was why I was taken by surprise when he acted unusual the very next day. It's hard for me to recall everything that day as I write this, but I do remember one thing: that kiss we shared spoke more to me than words can ever manage. Now we are content and happy with one another, lasting a total of about 6 months, but that fear I felt back then still lingers in my mind. The fear of now losing him like the others. The fear that something will come between us, something neither of us can control or stop, and I'll be alone again. My mind works strangely in these situations. While I am outwardly happy with my life now on the exterior, my mind races with endless possibilities all ending with me being left forgotten and abandoned. I suppose that is my reason for not wanting to fall. All the failures pile up until it's too much for me to bear any longer, and they begin to haunt me day in and day out. My only hope is that this time is different, and I can finally share my love with someone properly again.