Everyone says that time is the best healer. Maybe it is. But does time completely obliterate the scars too?

Those deep wounds might heal but sometimes, they leave stubborn scars behind.

So, it would be more appropriate to say that time is the best teacher. Time teaches you how to let go, how to get up and to live with the loss.

Most importantly, time teaches you to learn to risk your heart again.

What is true love? For me, true love is another name for selflessness. But true love also comes with a certain amount of selfishness. Doesn’t it?

When you love someone truly, you want the person’s complete time and attention. There’s nothing wrong with it. That’s how we are as humans. That’s how the feeling of human attachment is. True love comes with expectations.

Both selfishness and selflessness are intertwined in true love.

Selflessness because you are ready to forego the last piece of pizza for them despite the fact that pizza is your eternal love, only second perhaps. You go out of your way to comfort that person, you feel their pain, you rejoice in their happiness, you are as tensed as them before their important exam and as expectant when their results are awaited.

That’s how selfless love is. But is that enough?

Is true love enough?

Unfortunately, true love is never enough. True love has to be supplemented by compatibility, compromise, immense patience, determination, and faithfulness.

Someone correctly said that it is easy to fall in love but it is difficult to be in love.

It is about accepting each other’s imperfections yet not giving up on each other, it is about staying with that person through thick and thin and being with him or her even when you know that there are better people around. Love is about growing old together, seeing each other become mature and standing by each other through failures and success.

It becomes the bond of a caring mother and son or the love of a protective father for his daughter, the playful and trustful relationship between siblings or the strength between two best friends. It is a combination of many bonds.

Love is not easy. It is difficult. And those who experience it are lucky.

What if this love doesn’t work out? When both of you know that you are still in love yet things don’t work out. And each discussion turns into a fight. Or when one of the two falls out of love? Or long distance wrecks havoc in your relationship? Or an unexpected turn of events tears apart even the truest of lovers?

Does just love work then? Is it enough?

I got out of a toxic relationship almost two years ago. We had been together for five long years. Both of us entered the relationship at a time when none of us knew what true love actually was.

When we broke up, we knew what true love is but we also knew that true love is never enough.

It was undoubtedly an ugly breakup. I kept blaming him for over a year, kept expecting him to come back into my life until I realized that he is not coming back. Neither of us cheated. It was just an unexpected turn of events that added on to the already widening discrepancies that had crept in our once impeccable relationship.

After four months of begging, and consecutive “breakup – makeup” cycles, we realized that it was not going to work. We split. But I split with the small hope that maybe, one day, we would get back together. After five years of togetherness, all those memories etched in my mind and all those castles of dreams built in my heart, I was sure that life was going to be tough.

I knew that moving on would take forever.

I turned to my friends and my family. My family didn’t know about my relationship and even if they had known, I was not comfortable sharing what I was going through. Nights would be lonely, I missed his calls, the texts, and I missed the best friend in him who went away with the breakup.

I’d not only lost a boyfriend but also a best friend, a confidant whom I was used to badly.

I would secretly weep in the bathroom, my pillows would be soaked with my tears when I woke up in the morning. I forgot to laugh freely; even if I did, I forced it upon myself.

Looking at my face, anybody could tell that something was amiss in my life. I despised seeing my broken lifeless countenance in the mirror. I now look back and realize how much it had taken me to force that fake smile and be in the crowd, hiding the tears that threatened to fall.

I had mastered the art of not letting anyone know that I was broken from within.

However, while walking on a deserted street, I’d let my tears flow down my cheeks. I pitied myself. It hurt to see others so happily in love. It pierced my heart to help my roommates get ready for dates while I spent the day alone in my room, buried underneath the sheets, crying, restraining myself from reaching out to the phone to plead him to come back.

I missed how at the end of the day, I'd eagerly wait for his call and tell him everything that had taken place through the day. His mere voice was enough to soothe all my worries.

I found solace in blogging, writing in my journal and joining forums where people were going through similar situations.

It helped a lot. It helped to know that I wasn’t the only one going through a phase like that. There was a time when I would mock people who were broken and despondent after their breakup. I called them nagging and overdramatic.

I never knew then that love could hurt so much until I experienced it.

What helped me the most was talking to people. I made a lot of conversation with the people around me. I became a lot more talkative. Although I was broken underneath that smiling face that I put up, I knew that being lonely in a corner of the room would make me more miserable.

It was my choice, whether I decided to get up and move on or be pathetic and depressed.

The harsh truth is that people hardly care about your feelings. They will care for a few days and then they will not bother. Sounds bad but it is natural and completely normal.

You need to understand that people are fighting their own big and small battles.

They don’t have the time and patience to hear your sad saga and sympathize with you. You cannot expect them to lend their ears all the time. So you have to become your own best friend. Still, not a day passed by when I didn’t think about him.

The void that he had left in my life demanded to be filled again.

At times, it screamed desperately to witness the love and care that had occupied it once. During such a time, people seek love in every random person that they come across. And they enter into rebound relationships. I do not have the right to say whether such a thing is right or wrong. But my personal opinion is that before entering into a new relationship, you have to move on from the old one.

You have to get over that person before welcoming another person in your life.

Otherwise, you will search for the old person in the new one and that would be unfair to him/her. Each person is different in his/ her own way and you have to embrace people for who they are. Don’t make haste in falling in love. Heal your wounds first.

Love, if it has to come, will find its way to you.

What is the point of hurrying into relationships and getting your heart broken or breaking other’s hearts repeatedly until one day, you'll stop believing in true love at all!

There’s a very apt monologue from one of my favourite Bollywood films, 'Queen'. The protagonist, Rani, is dumped by her fiancée a few days before their marriage. She is broken and has locked herself up in her room, weeping and cursing herself while her adorable grandmother stands outside her door saying, “Aaj tujhe lag raha hai ki teri zindagi barbaad ho gayi hai, kal dekhna tu aa ke kahegi ki dadi jo hua achha hi hua.”

Today, I realize that it is true. I am happy for what happened because it changed me for the better. Today, I am thankful. Yes, it was a painful journey but I got over it.

The scars will remain. But the pain has faded.

I read the personal experiences of several other people. Many seemed exactly like mine. One such story I remember happened to be of a guy who had been left by his girlfriend because she fell for someone else. He said that he had moved on.

Once upon a time, he was furious at his ex for having left him for someone else but today, it doesn’t bother him. He is totally indifferent and is leading his own life. He is successful and though he hasn’t found a new love, he is in no hurry.

Another person said, “Human beings are the most unpredictable things on the earth. Do not attach yourself to any human being as your goal in life."

"Always keep your ambition and your dreams in something non-human, so that they won’t leave you in uncertainty one day.”

What I feared the most when I broke up (also when I was going through it) was that I might not find love ever again. I’ve read stories where people have been single for years after they broke up and it scares me to think of myself in their place. Here I am today, two years post my breakup, still single and happy.

Do I not miss being in love you ask? Yes, I do. I do miss being in love. I even feel terribly low at some points of time and I let go of my strong self-sufficient image and cry my heart out.

But I get up eventually and tell myself that falling in love and seeking a true-life partner is not the ultimate goal in my life.

I have much more important duties and responsibilities to fulfill. I have to make my parents proud, I have to do something for the society, I have to find happiness within myself and not go around searching for my happiness in others.

Remember, happiness is a choice.

When I saw other couples happily spending years together, I’d often wonder why my relationship didn’t work out. It made me think that something was wrong in me. I started doubting my own worth.

I thought I wasn’t good enough for anyone.

It took me a lot of patience and introspection to identify where we, as a couple, went wrong. It turned out that both of us had made our share of mistakes. It would be completely wrong on my part to say that he gave up on us.

Our relationship was trapped in a vicious circle of insecurity and “lack of interest”.

He was losing interest because he thought I was too clingy and insecure. On the other hand, I was insecure because he was losing interest. Lack of communication owing to the distance also added to the havoc.

The hardest part for me was to accept that it was over.

As I started accepting this bit-by-bit every day, it became easier for me to move on. Believe me, if you look around, and peek into the lives of others, you will realize that people are fighting much grave battles. I have seen people who lost their love to God, yet they are leading their lives normally.

When you look at their smile, you cannot get even an inkling of what they have been through.

I have seen parents who have lost their only child. I have seen my friends losing their parents. They have been through much bigger troubles. They are living with their loss and are still able to put up that beautiful smile on their face. They are an inspiration.

They remind me of how capable the human heart is to endure loss, to absorb shocks and to deal with agonies.

Because as Friedrich Nietzsche said, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

It is very natural for a human heart to see potential partners in the new people they meet. The void, remember? The void demands to be filled. But after failing many times, people lose hope; they develop a negative viewpoint about themselves. They start doubting themselves and feel that there is something lacking in them.

It is here that they try to become something that they are not.

Embrace yourself the way you are. Of course, if you identify some faults in yourself, then try to overcome them but do not try to change the things that make you, you.

Remember your qualities and your flaws are what make you unique.

Spend the time loving yourself, improving yourself, and working on yourself. Nothing beats the inner charm and the inner love that reflects on your face.

I was a person who would get offended by petty things. Today, I hardly take offense to anything. I have learned to laugh at my own stupidities. I am popular today for the hilarious person that I've become.

I am much more confident now than I was back then.

When you are in a relationship, you get accustomed to your partner’s habits. You synchronize your life with that of your partner. You mentally start relying on them in many ways (unintentionally). So when you break up, it becomes difficult for you to stop relying on them. Because it is a habit. And changing habits is always difficult.

I was so accustomed to consulting him for everything that happened in my life that when I broke up, it became absolutely difficult for me.

Every time I had to make a decision, I was reminded of him. That is when I realized that I had become so dependent on him that his absence had made me directionless. You seek validation from your partner. When that option goes away you lose your balance. So you have to tell yourself that you are sufficient, independent and that you don’t need validation.

You are the master of your own life.

Sometimes when people ask me if I have moved on completely, I find myself in bewilderment. I question myself, "Have I truly moved on?" Has there been a day when I’ve not thought about him? Yes, I have moved on.

I am definitely not in love with him now. But I do care for him. Though we aren’t friends nor are we in contact with each other, a part of me still wishes well for him.

I believe if you have truly loved someone at any point in your life, you can never hate that person.

No, there hasn’t been a day yet when I haven’t thought about him at least once. But that doesn’t mean I want him back in my life. Will I ever be friends with him again you ask? No, I wouldn’t risk it. It would just complicate our lives. I have no regrets.

I know that both of us have grown by leaps and bounds after this failed relationship.

I realized that my parents are the only people in this entire world who will never give up on me. My relationship with my family got a new definition.

I don’t know if he is with someone else today. If he is, he is definitely going to be a better boyfriend than he was with me. The same goes for me. If I ever get into another relationship, I will be better at handling things than I was in the past.

My personal diary is a witness to the capacity my heart holds to love someone dearly.

I am a highly empathetic person. Being empathetic has both pros and cons. But I am proud of my nature. I am proud of being a passionate headstrong lover.

Yes, I am ready for a new love in my life. But I am in no hurry. I can wait. Love can wait. And true love is worth waiting for.

Even if love doesn’t knock on my door ever again, I will still find ways to be happy.

As of now, I choose to love myself.

“Auron se kya khud hi se pooch lenge raahein, yahin kahin maujon mein hi dhoond lenge hum kinare… khud hi toh hai hum ... Kinare...”

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