It’s Okay To Feel Broken After A Heartbreak

Dear Friend,

I woke up today with a pain so debilitating I’m not sure I will make it out of bed. (You will. We will. I know that because so far I have made it out of bed every time I have felt this pain, so if we have done it before, we will do it again.) I woke up with the same hundred thoughts running through my head asking why I ended up where I am, always beginning with the thought of why I am not waking up next to the person I love.

I’m so sorry you are hurt. Our story has been told a thousand times and will be told a thousand more. I won’t tell you anything today you haven’t already heard or thought. Please don’t ask that of me and I will not ask it of you. All that is being asked of us today is to exist. Sometimes that is hard enough.

This may not have been your first hurt, my friend, and I’m afraid chances are pretty high it won’t be your last. When you give 100% like we have done, there is literally nothing left. That’s how math works. And when you have nothing left, starting again seems like much too daunting of a task to fathom. I am told that even though I feel like that, I must keep trying. I must start again. For me, it means I must start the next minute, or the next hour. Sometimes that seems easier to handle than starting the next day.

My friend, you are so sad. What I can tell you, though, is that our sadness comes from that beautiful place of knowing true happiness. You cannot get to this dark hole that we are in without knowing how beautiful that light of love once was. Try to hold onto that for a few moments if you can. Allow yourself to remember that happiness, even if it didn’t last as long as we wanted it to. It shouldn’t hurt to remember being happy, and if it does hurt, well, it hurts a lot less than the hurt we are feeling right now. I’ll take any slight reprieve that comes my way. You should too. We are so hard on ourselves.

You are not okay. Me neither, my friend. At this rate, I’m not sure I’ll ever be okay again. I think I used to be, which gives me hope that I can get there again, but right now I am not. Something happened yesterday to remind me that I wasn’t okay. Sometimes when I get a glimmer of hope that I will be alright, something happens and I am not alright. Sometimes “alright” seems like too generous of a term for how I feel in those moments. That is okay, even if I’m not. I am told that it’s okay not to be okay. Do you think the person who said that ever felt the kind of pain we’re feeling right now?

The person who made me feel safest is also the person who made me feel worthless. The person who promised over and over again that he would never leave has left. The person who told me that he and I were end game has now ended the game he played on me. This does not feel good, my friend, and I know that you have felt the same. I don’t want to tell you this is normal, because I don’t believe it is. I don’t believe we should allow this kind of hurt and pain to be normal, because it allows the people who hurt us to continue hurting others. Why does someone who knows they’re hurting us continue to do it? I didn’t realize that mercy was such a rare commodity these days. I was just trying to love. You too?

Anyways, my friend, our story is old. And it’s new. It is not for everyone, but it kind of is, right? It’s important to know how others feel so that we can become better humans for the people we meet. Do you think that we can try to help others? No, my friend, at least not today we can’t. We cannot help others when we are like this. This is when we ask (or silently hope) that others help us. There is no shame in this. Sometimes they cannot help. Sometimes they do not know how to help. That’s okay—sometimes we don’t even know what will help us.

Tomorrow might be just as bad, but it might also be way better than we can even comprehend. We just don’t know—that’s why we have to get up and try today. I am with you and we can do it. (Now you repeat that to me, because I need it too, my friend.)

I love you. Good morning.