We’re not bad people, we’re just people. 

When you hear someone say your whole life can change in an instant, you never realize how true it is until it does. 

This summer changed everything. 

At the beginning of this summer, my life wasn’t perfect, but it was very far from falling apart. I was so quick to revolve my life around the first thing I had to tether me to reality. I thought that if I could hold on to that anchor, I wouldn’t sink but the anchor began to slip, my world began to unravel. My boat was wrecking from all different angles. 

It only took that moment. I lost myself in that moment and so much of my life changed.

It’s possible to hurt the people you love the most in the world. It’s even more possible than you think. Only the people you give power to can hurt you. The worst version of myself was revealed this summer. It revealed things I never thought possible in the people closest to me. 

It’s so crazy it should be funny, but it’s not. It’s really not. I kissed my best friend’s ex-boyfriend, a guy she was still getting over, simultaneously hurting the one person I had ever really been with. 

There I said it.

Actions have consequences and those consequences can literally mess you up. So yeah, maybe you can’t help the attraction you feel towards someone, but you can help what you do about it. 

People always say live life to the fullest or other crap like carpe diem. You seize the day, but it’s just a day in the end. You can ruin things just for a moment, a moment that caused more heartache than it should have. You can cause so much hurt just to experience a fraction of euphoria. Euphoria that only lasts a moment before reality sets in. 

I’ve never been a fan of letting go. I can’t let go of people even when I should probably know better and I always know better, but knowing better doesn’t mean you actually do something with the knowledge. I can’t let go of people even if I know it’s probably what’s best for them because I’m selfish and I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll be alone. I can’t let go of people because I’ve held on for far too long, so long that parts of me are infused in them.

I’ve learnt a lot this summer, more than I thought was possible to learn in such a short period of time. I’ve lost and found myself and lost myself again. I haven’t quite found myself, but I believe that sometimes it’s okay to forget who you are in an instant. Well, maybe it’s not okay, but it’s normal. I’m still learning who I am, who I want to be, but I’ve learnt enough from one summer that I could write a whole book. 

Lesson 1: Don’t make people your everything. Even when they don’t want to disappoint you, it’s possible that they will. It’s human nature. 

Lesson 2: People will shock you. It’s possible to even shock yourself. 

Lesson 3: Don’t anchor yourself to an unstable thing. It’s okay to have a temporary anchor, but don’t make anyone your permanent one. 

Lesson 4: Don’t beat yourself up. I’m sure the rest of the world is doing that for you anyway. 

Lesson 5: Life sucks, but you can’t solve all your problems by running away. Sometimes you have to face things even when you’d rather run and hide. 

Lesson 6: Some things in life really shouldn’t be that hard. Nothing in life that is worth it is meant to emotionally hurt you that much. 

Lesson 7: It’s okay to feel sad when you know you made the right decision. It’s okay to let someone go even if you never really had them. 

Lesson 8: Sometimes you can like someone and they can like you back and things really wouldn’t work out the way you had hoped. Sometimes you don’t even know what you’re hoping for. Sometimes it’s good that the thing you hoped for never actually worked out. Sometimes the thing you hope for can destroy more than you think. 

Lesson 9: Attraction is not the same as real feelings. Sometimes you can get your feelings so messed up, you hurt people without realizing it. You hurt yourself too. 

Lesson 10: Prevention is better than cure.

Lesson 11: Human beings will do whatever they like no matter what you say or do and no matter how much they claim they care about you. Maybe they really do, I know I did. It’s human nature to hurt. It’s not an excuse, it never is, but it really is human nature to hurt. Some actions can hurt like heck especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Lesson 12: Never let anything blindside you that even for a fraction of a moment, you forget the things that are important to you, you forget who you are.

Lesson 13: I know talking about this or reading this won’t help, but a very small part of me hopes it will. 

How much easier would life be if human beings actually decided to listen?

I wish I could take all this back. They say live life with no regrets but I regret so much. Maybe the thing about living life with no regrets isn’t necessarily about not regretting anything you’ve done, but rather not dwelling on those regrets, not beating yourself up about things in your life you can’t change. 

Life can really suck, but it could suck a whole lot less if you put the people who care about you into perspective before doing things. Not everything you want at that moment is good for you. The things you want sometimes aren’t the things you need.

The biggest lesson I believe I’ve learnt this summer is not starting something you can’t see through to the end. Sometimes we start things we can’t finish and then we get stuck. Sometimes things get so bad that we break, we really break and it may not be all at once, not like when glass shatters. It could be like the wilting of a rose, such a delicate thing breaking, unraveling until all the petals are gone and all that’s left of it is the stalk, the memory of what was. You can never destroy the memories, but you can never put it back together again. Never let someone break you so badly, you put yourself together and the pieces don’t fit any longer. Never lose yourself in someone or something that when you finally get out, you forget who you are.