For a long while in my life I believed you could wish and hope things into existence, that if you hoped and prayed hard enough it would materialize. Unfortunately, several heartbreaks later, I realize that just isn’t how it works because sometimes the universe wrecks your plans before those plans wreck you. You can only follow something, an idea, a person, a habit, so far before the universe tugs you back to where you belong. Despite how badly we want something or someone to be ours, for plans to work out or to be good at something, there are instances in life where the world just says no.

When I said heartbreak, I didn’t just mean at the hands of another human being because heartbreak comes in many forms. Heartbreak can be with the loss of someone we’ve loved, the realization that someone is just not who we hoped they would be, it can be the reality of acknowledging you have to let go of a dream to survive. All of those things can break your heart because each of those things occupy a place in your heart, each of those things consume a piece of the fibers of the cloth we are woven in.

Sometimes though, the threads become frayed and worn and no longer hold the fabric of our lives together, they get snagged as we turn corners, they require constant mending and take our energy, and our minds, away from the path we deserve to be on. The hardest thing I’ve had to acknowledge in my adult life was the reality that the universe had to intervene because I myself didn’t have the strength to. Maybe the habit of holding on too long is buried deep within me, in a place I haven’t yet reached, but in my life, I’ve done it too often until the world sends me glaring and painful signs I need to put myself first and I can’t grow and succeed if my life choices are centered around someone else.

Maybe it’s the fear that I’ll never find such a meaningful person again that triggers me to hold on long after I need to, or maybe it’s the fact that I miss who the person was and can’t accept who they are. Whatever the reason, I have yet to realize it, but I have realized the fact that eventually the world says “no more” and you are forced to face down some of your worst fears or demons that you’ve spent time running from. In retrospect, I have survived every one of these instances in my life despite believing I’d never be able to at the time. I survived, and the idea of “never being the same” is partly true, I wasn’t. I had to change each and every time life had to shake something out of my stubborn hands. The changes aren’t all bad though, it gave me valuable insight I was able to use in my own life and in those of the people who I love. Maybe life gives us wisdom not only for our own well-being, but to help those around us.

I’m not quite sure what possess my stubborn self to repeatedly go back to things that have stung me, maybe it’s a desire to conquer things that hurt me, maybe it’s the hope that whatever it is will realize it was wrong for causing me pain and make amends. I’ve never gotten the answer though, and I’m not sure I ever will. At the end of the day though these things have helped define me, inspire me and catapult me into the next phase of my life, whether I’m ready or not.