People always said that heartbreak gets easier as you get older. They said that you get callouses and learn to move forward.

Maybe I can understand that defense mechanism a little better, now that I’m older. You get numb. Love is a little less rich and vivid. Like a painting, clear as day, of a sunrise over a magnificent open sea, in time and with age, warped into a pale, abysmal distorted image.

A sort of calm chaos that looms and whispers in your ear, “Don‘t love, don’t trust, don’t feel.” Everything‘s nice and easy and pointless. Stasis.

When you transgress and find only failure in love, the little fucker is always there to lean in and gently hiss, “I told you so.”

What they don’t tell you, is that you’ll always be vulnerable. Even the most invulnerable person and especially the rest of us. It will never cease to hurt, your past will never cease to make you question yourself. All that you’ve seen, experienced, done, will hang above your head like a piano hanging on a wire.

Your past becomes a harbinger. A reminder. An omen.

A lens that dims tomorrow. A cloud that darkens today.

There‘s nothing you can do about it. But to build the light.