So I’m currently going through some stuff. Some breakup stuff. Except it’s not even a breakup because we were never dating, you know? We were just…seeing each other? And it feels pretty horrible to be so sad about this—like breakup sad—when I can’t even claim that he’s an “ex" or anything like that. I can’t even put a label on it. And I’ll probably see him in the future, possibly the near future, but it will be different and we were never really supposed to be together anyways. But I digress.

The worst times I find are in the morning, right after waking up, when you realize where you are and that your dreams were just dreams and reality is still reality and reality just kind of sucks right now. You can tell your friends are running out of things to say to comfort you and they’re kind of over it anyways and as helpful as they are you’re still sad.

In moments of solitude and calmness you think of them, because it’s quiet and peaceful and because you really can’t help it. It’s so easy to fall into this depression. It is so easy to scream-cry to power breakup anthems and sob to sad love songs. It is so easy to dream about them and think about everything that happened a hundred times over again. I think this feeling is easy with anything that is getting us down. It doesn’t have to be a boy or a girl that’s getting us down—it could easily be a friendship or family issue or career misstep that has left a pit in our stomach that we simply can’t shake. It’s the feeling of: what if this went differently?

The only thing that can truly comfort me in my deepest moments is knowing that this is a universal feeling. This feeling is human. It is normal. It is real and it does not make you crazy. Every single human being on this planet has felt or will feel how you feel. That doesn’t make it any less painful but for some reason, to me, it makes it more bearable.

It reminds me that the person I am missing has felt this way about someone and will again feel this way about someone and perhaps feels this way about me. It reminds me that my mom, the girl on my Instagram feed who seems perfect, and the stranger passing me on the street has experienced these emotions and they are fine. They are alive. They are breathing. We are fine. And we can move on from this.

It is so important to remember that what you are feeling is not an isolated emotion. Millions of people are currently experiencing the exact way you are feeling right now. We are living together. This is just another part of the human experience.