There is nothing in life that will make you stronger or screw you up more than heartbreak. I have only had my heart broken by one person in my life — and it was more than enough.

Falling in love with someone isn’t only falling in love with an incredible person, a person you find to be one of the best people in the world. It’s also falling in love with the person you become when you’re with the one you love.

Sometimes the person we love makes us want to be a person who isn’t especially great. But when your love does make you want to be a better person, what the two of you share has a real shot at lasting the test of time.

Yet, there’s still more to it than just that. Falling in love is also falling in love with what you believe to be your future. Most often, losing this is what hurts the most.

When you lose the love of your life, you lose a piece of yourself — the piece that holds you together. You lose the piece of you that makes you the good person you’ve become; you lose the piece of you that allows you to be you. So when your heart gets broken, you, too, in a sense, break.

As there are different depths to love, I believe there are different depths to heartbreak. It only makes sense that the shallowest of loves leaves the shallowest of cracks, while the deepest of loves causes our hearts to undergo a sort of shattering.

The heartbreak I’m speaking of in particular is of the deepest kind — the kind that only really happens once in a lifetime.

I say only once in a lifetime because once we experience such heartbreak, we are never again the same. We become different people, scarred and nerve-damaged. We begin to look at life and love through a different shade of glass.

We will never have our hearts broken in exactly the same manner, as we have lost the innocence that allowed for such vulnerability in the first place.

When you completely give your heart over to someone — body and soul — and the relationship doesn’t work out, you lose that heart. It doesn’t matter if things didn’t work out because of them or because you yourself screwed up. It doesn’t even matter if there’s no one to blame.

If you were certain that you would spend your lives together and have to face the reality that the future you have been looking forward to for so long has just been taken away from you, it’s going to hurt. A lot.

Sad to say, it’s not a pain that goes away quickly. It takes time to heal — and you will most definitely need some healing. More importantly, you’re going to need some fixing. Someone is going to need to take the pieces of you lying sprawled out across the ground, and put you back together. The question is: Who?

The answer is simple. Only one of three people in the world can fix you when you’re dealing with the aftermath of a broken heart. Either someone new who has yet to break your heart, that someone who did break your heart, or you — the one who had this heart broken.

Each one of those three options has its benefits, but also tradeoffs. Finding someone new to love is usually our go-to. Most people very strongly believe that finding a new love to take the place of the old one is the best way to go. And for a good reason — because it works.

If you fall in love with someone new, the pain from the old love goes away — at least for the time being. The problems with this are obvious. Finding someone new to love only works for as long as the love stays alive.

As soon as the love fades or the relationship fails, that heartbreak that you buried way back when will likely resurface. The only reason it wouldn’t resurface would be if you were dealing with the pain from novel heartbreak. New love trumps old love just as new heartbreak trumps old heartbreak.

Then we have the second option — getting back together with the person who broke you in the first place. I feel like I need to put some sort of disclaimer here:

Although it is possible for your old love to fix you, to mend your heart and to make you happier than you ever thought imaginable — cent percent possible — it’s highly unlikely.

The person who broke you will almost never be the person who’ll fix you. Things always have a reason for not working out. Even if the reason is poor timing or lack of maturity, you are still carrying around a whole lot of baggage from the last time you two were together.

Once a relationship fails, it almost always fails every consecutive time. When you break someone’s heart, you lose that person’s trust.

If you don’t believe trust is the most important part of any relationship then you know absolutely nothing about relationships. Is trust re-gainable? Sometimes, I’m sure it is.

Depending on the circumstance, you may be able to get past all the broken promises, all the painful memories, all the unpleasant emotions that arise every so often almost out of the blue. But in other cases — most, even — the trust is gone for good.

Maybe the person who broke your heart can be the one to fix it… but the odds aren’t in your favor. Nothing is impossible, but going after the incredibly unlikely isn’t always in our best interest. Sometimes you have to accept that she will never again feel safe in your arms, and let her go.

It’s not always easy to move on. Sometimes, it seems impossible. But you need to believe you will find someone else to love when the time is right.

Statistically speaking, it’s almost impossible for there not to be another suitable match for you. Keep searching, be patient and you will find that person one day. Until that day comes, work on fixing yourself.

Love does as much damage as it does because we allow ourselves to wallow in that misery. We hone in on it and allow the painful thoughts and memories to fill our minds and to seep into all the nooks and crannies of our lives. We wait to be fixed and by doing so gradually become more and more broken.

You may be able to find someone to piece you back together, but there is only one person in the world who is guaranteed to do the job right. Only you can fix yourself the way you need to be fixed. Finding another lover can help, but it isn’t necessary.

Waiting to find someone new to love or waiting to get back with that one that got away is dumb. Maybe you will meet someone new one day.

Maybe you’ll get back together with the one who made you simultaneously happier and more miserable than you have ever been in your life. You can’t wait for someone else to motivate you to get your life straight.

Remember, one of the main reasons we’re capable of loving another person as much as we are, is how she makes us want to improve ourselves and the lives we lead. Other people never really fix you.

They only help you fix yourself. Be smart and fix yourself before you fall in love again. The better the person you are, the more likely you are to find your happily ever after...