A Broken Heart Can Kill You

I find myself on a path to healing, skipping merrily along, processing, grieving, sad, angry– all the motherfunking steps and just like that I’m reminded that healing, heartbreak, and growth is not linear. It’s been just over a year since The Alchemist and I have parted ways and there’s been a lot of emotions that’s happened in that year, and I’ve thought on several occasions that I’m wayyyyyyyy over him, past him, beyond him and something triggers a memory and I realize, I am not done healing from that situation and I’m upset about it. Fuck!

To be clear though, I don’t want him, I don’t even want to relive a lot of what transpired between us, and ironically it’s that specific thing that’s terrifying and heartbreaking for me. I allowed myself to love, be loved, fall in love and work towards love with this man, only for it to not work out. I came out of my shell, the shell that I used to protect myself with, hideout, live in there safely, and somehow I convinced myself that it was a good thing to feel love. It was but the heartbreak on the other side of it is incredibly maddening.

Fleabag my new obsession triggered some feelings in me that made me realize I was still getting over my heartbreak. Homegirl straight up slept with a fucking priest, and I was so drawn to that story because it’s the type of dumb and dangerous shit that I would do. While I hoped, she hoped and a lot of us hoped that he would choose her, it was pretty evident that he would choose his devotion to God over some earthly pleasures. He was conflicted though, he was very much into her, but he knew, and she also knew that he had to continue his path despite wanting so badly to have a life with Fleabag. It’s admirable and fucking ANNNNNNNNNOYING at the same time. Ugggggh! While I want to be devastated and super sad, I know damn well that The Alchemist and I couldn’t stay together. We have too much work to do. We chose a higher purpose, rather than staying within the confines of our love because there’s no growth in that, and our time together was up.

Yet, I felt that incredibly familiar feeling of utter devastation when Fleabag realized that The Priest hadn’t chosen her. She knew she got why but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. I knew why The Alchemist and I couldn’t be, shit I saw the end before we even began, yet I just had to see it through. I knew the risks. I knew what it meant to love so completely, and knowing there was an expiration date, and I did it anyway. It was worth the lesson, the growth, the self-introspection but it came along with a pain that brought me to my knees. Ugh. The days when I knew we had to have a hard conversation, I would cry for hours on end, I would literally feel my heart hurting and the daggers turning painfully and there was nothing I could do but ride it out. It hurt because he understood me, saw me, loved me too and it had to end. It hurt because we did things that caused each other more pain on purpose and I don’t like that. It hurt because parts of me felt like I had no right to be so devastated because he had walked out of a life with someone with whom he had children, a home and spent a lifetime with. Surely my pain was insignificant compared to hers. Yet, none of that mattered because it hurt all the same.

I can understand how people end up murdering the one they love and continue on to suicide. Love makes me crazy, possessive, compulsive, irrational, illogical and completely off the fucking rails. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. We can love people deeply, hurt deeply and lean into the lesson from the love and the fallout of it. There doesn’t have to be a lifetime of suffering even when your heart is broken badly because sometimes we need that to understand life, ourselves and each other. Each heartbreak makes me simultaneously tougher but also softer. I am much more resilient for having loved and been loved AND having my heartbroken but I’m also so much more tender for the exact same reasons.