Love Yourself Loudly

"When he decides he doesn't love you, move on quietly and love yourself loudly."
This quote showed up on my Tumblr recently, and (in as cliched a way as I can say this) it really spoke to my soul.  Almost a month ago I went through a breakup with a guy I saw a future with, and it hurt.  I got really melodramatic about it, to the point where my boss walked in on me lying on the floor of my custodial closet listening to Sara Barielles and sobbing.  My boss was nice about it, because generally I'm a pretty good employee, but it was not my finest moment.
For several weeks after the breakup I kept trying to make myself a part of his life.  He told me he still wanted to be friends, and I wanted to do everything I could to be friends with him.  I wanted to do everything I could to make sure that someday he would take me back, and we would have that future together that I wanted so badly.
That life doesn't work for me though.  Breaking up sucks.  Losing a future that looked REALLY good sucks.  Getting found by your boss in the fetal position staring at an iPhone screen while Sara Barielles warbles about a former lover keeping Manhattan sucks.  But it sucks worse sitting on a couch with a man who has been physically closer to you than any other human in your life and realizing that the two of you will never be that close again.  It sucks worse having someone who used to look at you with that cheesy chick-flick face (the one where the guy realizes he loves the girl, and the audience all sighs, you know the one) not even be able to meet your eyes.
So I decided to move on quietly.  Walk away. Put the phone down.  Go out with my friends.  Go to concerts. Go on roadtrips. Make new friends.  Reconnect with old friends.  And in the moving on quietly I learned something incredible.
I learned that I am resilient. I can come back from being the broken heap on a custodial closet floor and stand up and be the man dancing around at a Jason Mraz concert.  I can be the man who is there when his friends break down with ice cream in hand and a shoulder to cry on.  I can be the man who gets lost in a good book, and at the end feels a sense of total catharsis with the world.  It's beautiful. And when I learned that I am this man, I learned what it means to love myself loudly.