Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing the monkey bars. You have let go at some point so you can move forward…

It was a long and cold lazy afternoon. I found myself immersed in conversation with my cousin. We were sitting in the living room across from each other when he looked up from his phone and simply asked: “How do you decide to give up on someone? How do you know its time to let go?”

I sipped my chamomile tea and sighed. “I don’t think you give up on the actual person. I think we give up on the circumstance. Because if you love someone, you love them unconditionally. But we’re only human. I guess we just fail when our faith gets tested.”

We fall in love with love at a very young age. We live content with hand picked daisies and heart shaped letters. We welcome butterflies, dreams, and ideals. We paint castles and ever-afters. We allow our hands to be held, our deepest secrets to be known, and we share our laughter and our sorrows. We open up the way a flower blooms in spring. We find someone to love, to share, to miss, to be with. And happiness overflows our lives.

But then the storms come. And in its path weakens our foundations, erases the memories, and breaks all faith and hope. And we are left with pieces of what once was. So we give up. We stop clearing the debris and create more instead.

Now the question is do we grow weary to the point where our limits are surpassed by choice? I think it’s both a conscious and unconscious choice. We sometimes want to make things work so bad it hurts. But you don’t put up with so much because you are blind to it. It’s just sometimes you love someone that much. That purely.

You’ll never leave where you are until you’ve decided where you’d rather be. And sometimes that choice is with out them. To be with out her or him. Because all you really want in life is to be happy and some how you're mind is convinced your happiness does not lie there anymore.

So how to time it and bow out gracefully? You can’t. There’s no magic equation or solution to the issue. You just have to do it to save what is left of your heart. Giving up doesn’t mean that you weren’t strong enough. It just means you realized you don’t deserve the pain anymore. And even if your heart breaks to pieces you just have to move on. If someone isn’t there for you, you have no choice but to let them go.

So yes, it happens. We allow the rain to fall enough, we let it pour right over our heads instead of ducking for cover. We open up the door to defeat and to doubts, we allow negativity to consume us. Till one day you realize you just can’t take it anymore and that something has to give. And you walk away because that’s the cowardly thing to do. And let’s face it in trial most of us are cowards.

But love doesn’t end because you choose to walk away. Its threads linger in our intertwined stories. You are either the victim left in the middle of the rubble or you are the victim walking away from the crash site. Regardless both are wounded, both are hurting.

One thing remains the truth sometimes it takes a fall to know where we stand. And regardless of how black and blue you are left the truth is love will never give up on you. No matter how much you give up on it. Like the tide coming and going, it will grace your shore again.