Sunday, January 29, 2017

A Soft, Slow, (but no less intense) Heartbreak

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.


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