A Reminder That Heartbreak Is The Great Equalizer

Almost every being on this planet can in some way, shape, or form, connect with the experience of heartbreak.

The gut-wrenching, all-consuming, insidious throbbing that rattles us post-rupture of our delicate cores. It’s a part of the human experience. It’s a circumstance of life. It unites us as a human race- it transcends all boundaries to make us equal somehow, through our pain.

And while heartbreak can unite us in ways that nothing else can, it can also make us feel so abandoned. We each experience life through our own lenses so can any of us truly ever know what the other is feeling? We all experience the feeling within our own distinct worlds- our own unique bodies. No one will ever know what we felt. No one will ever be able to genuinely relate to our hurt.

And we don’t really talk enough about how fucking lonely this can be. How miserable it feels to have a time-limit on our grief. If we linger too long in the pain, we are feeble. Weak. Refusing to move on. And perhaps, if we maybe considered that we will never know another’s pain and in turn cannot judge that pain, perhaps then we wouldn’t feel so alone.. Perhaps then we wouldn’t need to quash what we feel deep inside.

We suppress our feelings to not disappoint others. To not disappoint ourselves. Instead we go down dark mental alleyways where we question our own sanity. Where we want to escape to anywhere but the place in your head that keeps reminding us of them in every slight way. We ball in our showers. We sob in bathroom stalls- where no one else can judge our pain.

But why should we?  Why do we have to get over something that we are not ready to (and simply can’t) let go of.  At least not yet. At least not in this moment. Why?

No one knows the numbing sensation you feel in your legs when you see them unexpectedly on the street. No one will ever watch the movie that plays in your head of the trauma you witnessed with them- the one that makes you want to break down and bawl. No one felt what you felt when you saw him with her. No one was with you when you staggered home in agony that night…no one will ever know your anguish.

And it’s because of this that I think that we should cry when we want and talk when we feel like doing so. We should shout their names in vain and cry some more….

Because we are hurting. We are still healing. And no one can tell us when it should be over because no one will ever know the degree in which we gave ourselves to them. No one will ever know the severity of the burn. So please, can we stop hiding our pain?