Quotes For Healing Broken Hearts [Continuing]

Letter April 28

Dear Justin,

Today, I realized that maybe you're suffering too. For awhile, I kept thinking that you never loved me. I kept thinking you were unaffected by losing me because you jumped straight into another relationship. You blocked me on social media for some time. You also stopped initiating any contact whatsoever, and even when I initiated contact, you were very cold and distant.

All this time, I thought it was because you didn't care about how I felt. I thought it was because you didn't love me, but after some long thinking, I concluded that you deal with your emotions very differently. I've always known this about you; I've seen how you dealt with your emotions when it comes to your family. I don't know why it didn't occur to me this time. When you're in pain, you shield it and hide it away in the depths of your soul. The more pain you're in, the colder you'll act.

Maybe you blocked me because you were afraid of being confronted with the emotions that came with our new reality. Perhaps you stopped initiating contact because you were afraid of opening your wounds again. You were cold and distant because you didn't want me to see your emotions; you didn't want anyone to see them. Perhaps, you even hid those emotions from yourself. Showing emotion has hurt you and you've come to believe that "pushing them back" is the best way, maybe the only way, to move forward.

It makes sense that you jumped right into another relationship because you couldn't deal with the void in your life. There was an emptiness that existed in your life when we split up, and as soon as someone casted a sympathetic smile your way, you took that chance to fill the emptiness. The newfound infatuation is giving you a distraction from all the turmoil, and it has given you hope that you can move on. It's helping you forget me. It's boosting your self esteem. I understand now that you don't truly love her, at least not yet, and I'm a little ashamed to say that this realization gives me some relief.

Yet at the same time, I'm gravely concerned about you. You didn't give yourself enough time to deal with the emotions of our breakup. You didn't give yourself enough time to reflect on your mistakes, our mistakes, and learn from everything there was to be learned in our relationship. How will you nurture a stronger relationship in your next relationship if you didn't take a long, hard look at ours and learn from it? Besides, you still have baggage in your life you need to deal with. You still have uncertainties about your future, and dreams you want to pursue, and the person you hope to become. You can't find someone that will be perfect for you if you haven't really figured yourself out.

Soon, you'll realize that there's still a nagging feeling at the back of your mind, an emptiness creeping back in that she can't fill because you haven't dealt with the grief, and more importantly, you haven't faced your inner demons head on. She can't do that for you. No one can. While there's temporary comfort with her, your baggage is still there, waiting to resurface.

You told me that you're good at pushing back emotions and just keeping them there, but Justin, if you keep pushing back the emotions, if you keep tucking away what's bothering you, it'll manifest itself in ways you wouldn't expect. Even though you think that you're over me, the reality is that you don't move on from someone you've been with for three years just like THAT. You're going to go into other relationships with less trust, less effort, and maybe more recklessness because of the emotional hardships that this relationship has put you through. In fact, you've already done this by rushing into a relationship with little emotional depth, and doing so even though you're leaving the city in a couple months. Without realizing it, you're going to use other girls to try to deal with these emotions that you've convinced yourself are dealt with, but you and other people will end up getting hurt.

I'm not writing this out of spite or to make you feel guilty. I'm writing this because I once loved a boy whose name was Justin. There's still a part of me that hopes that there are fragments of the person that I loved left with you, and because of that, I want to protect what's left of him.

If you realize that she can't fill the void, and if you feel you have no one to turn to, and if you just don't know how to deal with the emotions, please, reach out to a friend. Sadness can be magic when you uncork your heart to the right people. Maybe you'll find an emotional support system in your friends and not feel like you have to deal with everything on your own.
If not, know that you can reach out to me as a friend. I know I've hurt you, but I promise that I don't want anything but the best for you. I've been dealing with the grief and have been putting my heart back together, piece by piece. I've come to a place where I've accepted that I'm not the right person for you and you're not the right person for me. I won't attempt to pursue you again, so I'd help you without trying to justify my old self or trying to mend what once existed between us. I just want to help you truly deal with the emotions, not just push them aside like you've done your whole life.

You may not realize it, but because you pushed aside your emotions your whole entire life, that has affected our relationship too. If you continue to push aside your emotions, you will bring the same issues into your next relationship. Maybe they'll manifest themselves differently, maybe they'll take awhile to show up because the honeymoon phase may hide them, but they will come up eventually. I don't want that to happen to another girl, or for you to have to deal with it. When you push back your emotions, the emotions go to the basement and lift weights. They come back much stronger.

I want to help you not only because I know what it's like to be raised in the Vietnamese culture that frowns upon expressing feelings and showing weakness, but I also want to help you because I love the remaining fragments of the old you, and I'll never stop loving that person. The difference is that I can separate my feelings from action now. I can differentiate between old Justin and new Justin. Fake Justin and real Justin. I won't pursue you anymore, because he doesn't exist.

I really hope the best for you.
I hope that you'll get to go to Johns Hopkins for graduate school, become a successful anesthesiologist, nourish a healthy relationship, and have a family 1,000 times healthier and happier than your current family. I'm rooting for you!
And if you don't reach out to me, good luck, with everything.

Love always and goodbye,

Nhi Vo