you will feel sad. 

You will feel sadness most of all. Sadness filtered through loneliness. You will spend your days wondering why. Retracing all your steps, picking apart everything you’ve ever said or done. Trying to pinpoint exactly where it started. Replaying the moment over and over, when your phone first chirped and you look over to see a message that reads: There’s someone on my bus that is so beautiful it makes my heart hurt and I’ve never felt that way about you. I’m sorry. 

You will not want to eat, no matter how much you know you should. 

“It’s been days since we’ve seen you eat a meal”, your housemates will say. And you will know they mean well, but they just don’t understand. You’re not choosing not to eat, you have no desire to. 

You’ll sit on the bus, pop music playing through your headphones. Sad music is for people that want to exacerbate the mood. You’ll stare out the window, and realise you can feel sadness in your eyes. You’ll go home and go straight to bed. You fall asleep thinking of them, maybe you’ll still be together in your dreams. 

You’ll go for long drives and stare out at the ocean. It’s a cliche, but you’ll do it anyway. You won’t know quite what you’re looking for in the crashing waves. Maybe they’ll remind you of your heart, both constantly breaking. Maybe you’ll find solace in its vigour, always beating against the same shore, never stopping, never changing. 

You’ll read more and talk less. Try and understand who you are through comparisons to Elizabeth Bennett, Jay Gatsby, Holden Caulfield and Sal Paradise. You’ll realise that other people have gone through this: love, heartbreak, confusion. You’ll also realise this doesn’t make it any easier to bear. 

But you will go on existing, trying to live a normal life. You will have always prided yourself on not needing people to be complete, so this will hit you hard. You’ll go to work, classes, whatever extracurricular activity you choose to spend your time. You’ll laugh harder than normal, a classic over-compensational move. You’ll tell people you are fine. Because you are – on paper. On paper, this won’t affect you as hard as it will. 
Things will start to get better. You’ll realise that the “we are here for you, whatever you need”, texts from friends will heal you. Housemates putting hot water bottles at the end of your bed and making you cups of tea and buying you chocolate will start to fix the hole in your heart. One day you will laugh and not fake it. You’ll see them, maybe with someone else, and you’ll no longer want to crack open your ribcage, give your heart to someone else. Your eyes will feel less sad. You will be okay.