Heartache is a creature discomfort unlike any other known to us humans. Unlike the usual sadness or despair we experience over things like a lost job, lack of parental support, or not having as many social opportunities as we’d like, matters of lost or damaged loves are particularly and broadly wrenching and tend to send us into tailspin mode before we know what hit us.
People walk around with broken hearts all the time. Shocking but true! The guy who looked like hell on the subway was not just tired on a Monday morning, his girlfriend stuck her stiletto in his guts last weekend with a final goodbye. That girl at work wasn’t being rude when she neglected to hold the elevator door last night, at least not as rude as she was when she cheated on her wife with a guy from college- and now she feels like hell. Note: causing heartache may be more painful than being heartbroken, because there is guilt involved in making decisions that may hurt others. Guilt in deciding we can’t even if we want to or shouldn’t even if we can [do…whatever it is]. The weight of that guilt and the sinking feeling of final decisions is, at times, an unbearable load: we must put it down when it gets too heavy. We must pretend it isn’t there, for the psychological burden of decisions that are right but still look mangled puts pressure on the rest of the things we are responsible for in life… those obscenely mundane things, things nothing like your lost love or my damaged heart, they take up space they don’t deserve.
But O: Ironically, the mundane life can help heal hearts. It keeps us moving forward, whether we want to or not. It provides distractions we wouldn’t choose, being ridden with endless guilt
and stricken ill with the grief of loss. We would never, in the midst of experiencing brokenness of heart, give ourselves what daily life tasks can randomly allow us to feel alive. Life may have a different opinion of what we, in this trampled state, need to grow and it shows us the way, whether we think we deserve it or not.
You’ll laugh over cute babies and cry at movies, maybe more or less than usual. Need caters to circumstance. You’ll take on a suit of stoicism in moments of inconsolableness, changing outfits when that clothing becomes too weighty on your limbs. Changing weather will feel different than it did in times of less certain pain. A full garden will not mirror your weathered heart, because the world doesn’t care if you feel like spring or winter inside. What a blessing…
One day, you’ll look back and consider how time was your friend for all it did to smooth your awful edges, scab your wounds, leave scars to remind you not to do that again. Canvases of deeds we are: don’t stay unmarked. Don’t let heartache just be a lesson in handling pain. It hurts because there was something to lose and that something was good. It’s true that the heart has more reasons to lose than keep, I think. Some people must be alone at times, others cannot stand still long enough to attach, some are unhealed, some do not return our love, but that should not shadow the love we hold. If you feel love, cradle that capability. Care for your own love. Give it where it can grow- plant emotional seeds instead of standing over the barrenness of what cannot happen at this time. Take comfort in your love, for that love is never wasted where it stays sweet as honey in you.
Kaitlin Sansoucie 