Different Hearts, Same Heartbreak

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Our hearts have minds of their own, separate from our brains. Some hearts are punching bags, taking jab after jab before softening out again, only to be sucker punched from behind in the next round. Some hearts are guarded, with walls high enough to shield the insecurities that shine in their eyes. Then there are the hearts that hold so much love, they need to give it away because it’s just in their nature to.

The punching bag hearts suffer hit after hit but are always right back in the ring, ready to take on the next boxer in hopes that it might just be the heavy weight champ. The guarded hearts keep their walls high, but one day another will come along who is valiant enough to climb the walls and eventually break them down to discover a treasure behind the barrier. The hearts that hold so much love stay buoyant in life and continue to give even through love’s rough waters so that eventually they find another heart to drop anchor in.

But even with different types of hearts, there is only one kind of heartbreak: horrible, tragic, and eye-opening.

How do you put heartbreak into words? There isn’t an adjective in any language that can accurately describe it. There’s no way to explain your heart breaking and what’s even scarier is that there’s no way of telling it to stop. You wake up in the morning thinking your heart is whole and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get through the day today. Then you’re driving to school or work, a song comes on, and that’s when visual pictures of memories flash through your mind. Then you’re really screwed and every time you think of him or her; a little piece of your heart feels like it breaks off inside of you.

One by one you feel all these pieces shatter and you swear that you can feel them falling slowly throughout your body, each one’s edges stabbing you on the way down. Your heart’s broken but your whole body hurts. Then you get into bed at night, thankful to be back in a safe haven under the covers where you can cry alone and not be judged for being so weak to another human being, when all of our lives we are taught to be independent. And after a silent moment in the dark, you swear that your heart is completely crushed and it just can’t hurt anymore, so you fall asleep praying to God that you don’t dream of them for another night in a row. Then you wake up the next morning with, somehow, a whole heart again but like clockwork, the cycle starts over and the pieces begin to fall.

So where is the eye-opening part of this? You don’t know yourself until you’ve had your heart broken. Maybe your heart was made strong in order to carry the pain for another, whether or not the other will admit that their heart needed to be carried in the first place. Or maybe you were meant to pick up the pieces alone in order to learn how to love yourself first before you let anyone else love you. But no matter how many days you go waking up with a complete heart that slowly breaks over the course of 24 hours, the next day it is always magically whole again. Over time, the jagged edges will eventually dull out from poking you and slowly but surely, less and less of the pieces will fall throughout the days until one morning, you wake up waiting for the cycle to begin again, but it doesn’t.