Dealing With Heartbreak After Herpes

2010 was the year I went away to college. I was a transfer student and it was the first time I ever lived away from home. I lost my virginity the year before to my first boyfriend. I can honestly say I wasn't in love with him, but he was my first and therefore there was an attachment and a hurt I'd carry from the way things ended. My heart was so hardened after that relationship. It changed me in a lot of ways. Bitterness was my daily drink and anger was my main response toward men. Although, I despised them because of the hurt I had, I still felt incomplete without them and desperately desired to be desired. I was a month and half into my first semester when I met my next guy. Let's call him Tom.

Tom and his friends were students and visiting our campus from out of state, I met him the morning after a party. No, not as in we all went out to coffee the next day and I met him in Starbucks. The morning after as in, the party started at 11 pm Saturday night and then I went to the after party at someone's house, and after the after party at like 6 am, I met him. That was a regular night for me back then lol. Being hardened from my past relationship and coming to a new campus with tons of guys, I was honestly in a place of not caring about guys' feelings and doing me. Meaning, I wasn't trying to be in one relationship, I wanted to be free. I wanted boos and F-buddies and that was it. Learning that Tom was from out of state, I definitely wasn't trying to take him seriously (on top of the mindset I had), but he was cute and funny and I figured he'll just be my boo in that city. I figured I'm in college and road trips are a thing, so I can have campus boos and out of state boos. Whenever I go to that city, I'll have someone to connect with. That's ALL I thought of it as. However, I've since learned that communication is the way to the heart. Whoever you're communicating with consistently will most likely take space in your heart whether you intended for that to happen or not. And that's exactly what happened. My out of state boo that I planned to merely have on-call when I visit that city soon became my best friend and situationship/basically relationship boo lol. My heart was growing for him and I could really see myself marrying him one day.

It was to the point where Tom and I had gotten into disagreements and I was ACTUALLY apologizing to him, that WAS UNHEARD OF!! I never apologized to anyone, I was so prideful and felt like apologizing was "weak". However, I was learning to communicate because he was leading by example and apologized to me when he messed up. He paid for me to come see him and bought me a webcam so we could Skype. His attention to me made me feel like I was in a dream world. I didn't know this until 6 years later, long after the relationship lol, but I was falling in love with him. This meant I was starting to heal from my ex and actually trusting again. So you can imagine how distraught I was when I returned home from my last trip visiting him and the doctor told me I had contracted herpes. I saw the trust I placed him that just shattered before my eyes. I remember calling him up screaming and balling. I was hurt in so many ways that couldn't be identify in the moment. As I yelled and cried and cried and yelled, he sat there in silence. After getting off the phone with him, I wrote him an email with some harsh wording and told him I never wanted to speak to him again. I blocked him from all social platforms and deleted his number. He was the only one that knew this truth about me, but I cut him out my life, so now it was just me, by myself, in my brokenness.

My body was in a great deal of pain, but my heart hurt so much worse. Proverbs 18:14 says the spirit of man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can bear? Meaning, when the body is sick, our strong, upbeat spirits help us to hope and help our bodies to recover. However, if your spirit/heart, the place you draw hope from is sick, then who's able to bear or get through that? What medicine is there for broken hearts or spirits? How can any human being endure that? That's literally how I felt, like I couldn't endure. When a person gets to that place, the enemy will either continue to weigh the person down with thoughts of hopelessness until they surrender and take their life because they can't endure. Or satan will influence them to self-medicate in order to  numb the hopelessness. Which may enable temporary endurance, but ultimately destroys the person from the inside out. I took the second route. As I mentioned earlier, I was a wild partier, drinking was a regular part of my life. But partying and drinking took on a new meaning for me. Now, when I drank, I didn't want to feel. I wanted to escape my life and be anyone, BUT me. Not feeling the hurt, for even a few hours, was some sort of "relief" I was willing to receive.

Maybe you're feeling the heartbreak after herpes. I went through it and wouldn't wish that pain on my worst enemy. I wish I could take it away from you, but I can't. We live in a broken world, filled with hurt and pain. No one ever plans to get hurt. As much as we try to guard and protect ourselves, it can still happen. Beloved, I don't have any magic words or button to press to make it go away, but I do know that God is a healer. God may have healed my body in 2013, but He's STILL healing me from the trauma of my experience with Tom 9 years ago. It will take time, but know that if you bring your heart to Jesus he is able to nurse it back to health. It's okay to cry. Cry at his feet. Let him know it hurts, tell him it's hard, be real with YOUR God. Your honesty and transparency with God is what's going to aid in your own internal healing. When you tell him what hurts, that exhibits the faith he needs to now move to start the repair in that area. Again, it will take time, but IT IS POSSIBLE. Jesus loves you so much.

May your hope be in Jesus Christ,

Anreka


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