What does a heartbreak teach us?

 

Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines heart break as “a crushing grief, anguish or distress”. So clearly this is something awful and can have a wide connotation which doesn’t only include romantic love. It can be on a death of a pet, a loss of a friend or any form of betrayal too, right? (In this article, we will look at it from the perspective of a person leaving, though you can suit your taste) and this form of agony, is supposed to be the best teacher as per some world renowned nobody, because it changed so many lives, it brought people to some ‘a-haa’ moment of enlightenment, taught things which apparently books don’t cover and became a multi-million dollar product to sell by self help writers. So yeah, it apparently does teach us something, but what really? In this moment of anguish, when all the ‘what ifs’ and exaggerated multicolour dream sequences of memories, go on a loop in your head, and at the same time you are in the constant self-doubt spiral, what is this ‘a-haa’ moment exactly? The last time I went through this feeling, all I remember was this horrible tight vacuum sucking the life inside me, like a vortex had opened inside my stomach and instead of taking in my belly fat it decided to suck in my soul. I remember, the oh-so crushing feeling of ‘was I not enough?’ and ‘why me?’ just engulfing my head, the ‘countless’ memories aching me (in actual they weren’t really countless, but doesn’t my mind love exaggerating things) and this horrible scream echo inside my hollow chest saying “WHY ME YOU MF? WHAT DID I DO TO YOU?”. So, you can clearly get an assumption I wasn’t happy to say the least and writhing inside. To make matters worse, here comes the self-comparison “Maybe if I didn’t look like this, things would be different, or maybe I should have done anything else”. And all those terrible break-up songs don’t work either. Suddenly the person who was your person, your everything, the one who hugged you like the world was ending, or who laughed with you till your lungs ran out of air or who held you tight when you cried, told you ‘I’d never lose you’ or any of those other million things which currently your mind is screening for free inside, DOESN’T EXIST ANYMORE. Yes, that same person doesn’t exist, he is dead and you got to mentally bury a person who is alive so that you can just move on and get out of this agony, and just keep thinking that somewhere you may meet someone better but at this moment, you don’t know this human, he is nobody and most importantly he is dead to you. Thinking about this, makes me type so hard that I think my keys would give up too. But yeah, you get it right? Pain.

Pain of losing someone who you didn’t want to lose, pain of your hopes and fantasies hitting a hard stop, pain of moving on when your mind is still stuck on the terrace with the soft wind blowing, pain of seeing that person as someone who has hurt you rather than someone who wasn’t capable of doing something like that, pain of seeing him with someone else, pain of remembering the pain and the harsh words but worse of remembering what were also the best moments of your life and making peace with the fact that they are over. So yes, pain of burying the old, finally seeing that human as dead to you (because let’s face it, the person you fell in love with doesn’t exist anymore, he doesn’t. He is as good as a dead person, just the difference is the face is alive and the soul isn’t.) Funnily, you try finding for that same soul in all the other guys on random apps, and guys you meet in parks, or parties or just going on a rampant goose chase and scavenger hunt for whoever you can next find to replace him. Rebound. In all the next faces you see, you try finding him, in all the souls you see, you try correlating, you see if the new guy likes the same football team too because even if you don’t watch that sport, you have somewhat formed an allegiance to your past’s choice, you randomly take him to your familiar spot which you once shared hoping, in the slightest bit to recreate your past again. You order the same food, forgetting its not the new guy’s choice anymore, you subconsciously bring out old inside jokes forgetting that the person you are saying it to wasn’t even there to understand the context and in the midst of this all, you just hope and die inside wishing it weren’t this person. You just wish this rebound face had the old face and the old soul and everything old and you are hit with this stark realisation, that you don’t even love this rebound face. You are just fantasising imagining the old juxtaposed on the new. But why? Why would you want to juxtapose a person who gave you the worst pain in hopes that the pain would stop. If the pain had to stop, he wouldn’t have given it to you in the first place, right?

So back to the main question, why is heartbreak a teacher? It’s the first time you realise something that was so beautiful and enchanting and almost riveting to the body and soul can also be agonising, sadistic and brutal to the same as well. A duality of some sort is formed, where a person who was once metaphorically ‘wiping your tears’ is the same who has caused them. A sense of self dissolves and fuses with the idea of that person, and suddenly you ruminate so much on those few positive memories completely overlooking the fact that yes, he hurt you. Heartbreak is a master manipulator. The guy, who chose someone else over you, who used you till his heart desired, who threw you away for another person in jiffy, who didn’t seem to absolutely be a tiny bit bothered by your absence, is someone who you feel you ‘lost’. The same guy, who never missed your presence, who never chose to prioritize you, or value you or even respect you for that instance is an ideal who you are trying to find because one stupid memory is going on like a movie on repeat. You keep picturing him with his new girl, you obsessively stalk her and him, you hope something happens and he comes crying back to you, dramatically asking you to take him back, on his knees, tears flowing, you get your happy ending because apparently ‘if someone goes and comes back they are yours’. NO. What is yours never goes and if someone decided to leave you over someone, that is their choice which clearly meant you weren’t. So hoping that a person who never chose you in the first place to come back and take you back like an afterthought does not only show you as a left over, it shows you as a left over of a person who is so unsure of himself, that he himself doesn’t know what way to go, and unsurety, my friend is dangerous. So, if you are picturing him right now coming back in a Ryan Gosling style, holding his arms out and saying, ‘I want you back’, Run. If he chose to leave and go, if he chose to hurt you, if he put your needs aside over his, don’t give him the satisfaction of having to chose you as an afterthought. Leave him at a place, where he doesn’t get his choice.

In this moment of pure disdain, where you feel some evil spell has been cast over you by the Universe, with all the overindulgences you have had, the goddamn image of his ain’t going anywhere. You feel like crying, maybe have cried a lot but something is still not leaving you. You curse, you shout, you try to get that tightness outside your heart, you try to fix yourself and you somewhere succeed, but the dusk falls upon and you realise you are at the same place again. After countless blocking and unblocking, crying to your friends, teary pillowcases, Nicholas Sparks’ movies and Taylor Swifts rants, this feeling is here to stay. A part of you wants to throw up also, hoping that lump too gets out, you just want that pain out in any form whatsoever possible. And in the midst of all this gore, you suddenly have this epiphany that even though your life is empty without the past, its empty to fill in the future. The guy who never gave any care in the world about me is gone, and yeah something bad is gone. Godspeed with his journey, but I don’t have a person in my life who doesn’t chose me anymore. You realise, that it ain’t the hope of the future or a happy rebound that keeps you afloat, but the fact that you lost something painful, which isn’t a loss in the real sense. Yes, the feelings and memories come back and you still have to picture him with his new girl, but the truth is - unsurety is dangerous and you just escaped that. The truth is, yes that old scent or a old place holds a special place in your heart, but there are more than thousand scents and places undiscovered which might just hold an ever better place, that you might slip up an old inside joke or remember his favourite dish, but someone might just laugh at that joke a lot harder and  introduce you to a new cuisine you never expected to find. You are finally at a place where there is someone who choses you and that is you, because how devastating it is to have someone in your life, who you can do everything for and yet they wouldn’t choose you. How devastating is that, that person’s inability to see value in you has changed how you value yourself when that isn’t even remotely true. That you have been living maybe in a false reality and your mind has over exaggerated events and that is stopping you from actually experiencing even the better ones.

The beautiful part of letting go is that you suddenly have the choice to feel good or bad. You can still go to the terrace with the soft wind blowing, feel the air and enjoy every bit without associating anything about that to the person. The venue exists, the air exists, the person doesn’t but the feeling does, and the only difference is, you re-route it to you. Solitude is love too. You can picture him hand in hand with someone else and at the same time realise, that he chose to do that and leaving you is actually his biggest loss and your biggest gain. You finally don’t have a person who even in their slightest bits are capable of leaving you, and more than that you are finally a person who can find love in the same places as well, and not have his face attached to it. The feeling of having control back in your life is finally established, as even after blocking across all the social media, yes you remember him, but you also remember a person who doesn’t exist anymore and now you leaving him at the same place you found him is nothing but a necessity. Along with the old memories that haunt you, the new painful ones of the ill-treatment just remind you that yes, you in fact only deserve better. (Have a ‘Plus one minus two rule’ in your mind always. For every happy memory you get, think of two of the bad ones. No, it ain’t as bad as it sounds, its just to fix the master manipulator called – heartbreak. ) For every time you remember his laugh, remember how me made you cry on two separate occasions. There nullified. Recovering from a heartbreak isn’t just ‘finding a new face’, it’s finding your own face. Its giving yourself the same happiness someone else gave you, its trying till your heart hurts to be your own companion, its finding a rebound in yourself, its constantly reminding that you deserve better and having the certainty that whatever not meant for you in your life will leave and whatever you deserve will come. Old memories go when new ones are created and the best person to create them with, is you. If he didn’t choose you, you choose you. If he chose to neglect you, you choose to prioritise you, and if he chose to leave you off and let you go, then don’t romanticise him. The only winner in this game in this game is, the one who is the first to let go and move on. Breathe through the pain, imagine a life without him (which shouldn’t be that hard), do something that you love every day and don’t cling on to the hope of your past. Invest in the hope of your future. Afterall, in the end the only person’s choice that matters is yours, and the only person you need to choose is you.