It is this writer’s opinion that right now is the best time
to be going through a breakup. To have your heart torn apart and your hopes for
the future stepped on and torn apart by mutant trolls. To have the past seven
years of laughter and hope and pain and joy have been for nothing and to have
meant nothing.
But I digress.
Why a good time to be heartbroken, you ask?
In the past, break ups have always meant being a
misunderstood island, part radioactive and part active volcano. No matter your
best friends’ best intentions or efforts, we always feel alone in our pain,
unless you’re lucky enough to have someone going through a break up at the same
time. And even then, there is an aloneness to it still, because you may think
they’re doing better than you because they seem so put together and cool while
you’re constantly falling apart over stupid things like his old shirt you find
at the back of your cupboard or a remote control that won’t cooperate because
it has run out of batteries when you’re trying to watch tv like a normal
non-heartbroken human being.
But yesterday, in my misery, when I was watching a trailer
of a movie called “Drinking Buddies”, there was this line that stuck with me.
“It’s the problem with heartbreak; that to you it it’s like an
atomic bomb, and to the world it’s just really clichéd because in the end we
all have the same experience.”
Even though I wasn’t a fan of the movie (in fact I couldn’t
even get to the halfway point), that single line stuck with me. I had a moment
where I went YES, that feeling is exactly what I’m going through. And through
my heartache riddled haze, I recognised that at least one person out there knew
the aloneness I was going through. He or she may have written that line ages
ago, in months or years past, but they knew.
And they had bothered to put that line in a movie so that I knew I wasn’t
alone.
Then today I heard Adele on the radio singing about how her love
ain’t water under the bridge. And I just fell in love with her even more
because she gets it too! Even “Say Something” has a whole new meaning to me now
compared to when it first came out.
It is circumstance that gives these works new meaning. In my
case, the circumstance happens to be heartbreak. But the meaning is there,
waiting to be found. These hints are there, just waiting to show you, to
reassure you, that even though you feel the most alone that you’ve ever been
because there’s this giant hole in your life that you feel in your chest and in
your stomach every moment of every day like a weight, that someone, that so
many people, know how you feel. They’ve been through it. They’ve cried just as
much as you, maybe more. They’ve felt the dichotomous “I want to see him. Wait,
no I don’t,” too.
It’s no one’s fault, the emptiness that you feel. But your
friends understand. Your family understands. They may not react the way you
need them to. Your parents may tell you to move on like it’s supposed to be
easy, like the past goodness knows how many years have meant nothing. Your
friends may be a little mad at him, calling him names before you’re ready for
it because you still love him so damned much. Your brother may be a little
callous, saying that it was obvious that if something were to happen between
the two of you, it would have happened by now. Your sister may be a little
dismissive, telling you how weird she thinks he is.
BUT. They understand. They all do.
And these days, with songs and movies and YouTube videos and
Tumblr and Pinterest and Instagram all touting optimistic quotes and subtle “We
get it” hand holding, it’s so easy to find and accept that even though you feel that atomic bomb blowing up inside
you again and again and again…
You’re not alone. You never have been. And you never will
be.
