Heartbreak

Heartbreak.  The worst pain in the world.  I have not given birth, but I have passed kidney stones and those who have done both say the kidney stones are worse.  I have broken bones, I have cracked ribs.  I have had two heart attacks and six major surgeries.  I know physical pain.  And I would go through all of it over and over if I did not ever have another heartbreak.  Heartbreak is the worst.

Heartbreak only happens when we love someone, and when I say someone I should include animals who are members of the family.  All life ends.  And for those who have reached the end and left me here I have ached, and ached.  The ache is literally in my heart.  In my chest.  A tightening that will not come loose.  Memories make it worse.  Replaying happy times makes it worse.  But most terrible is projecting current and future times.  I wonder what the people I love who no longer love me are doing now.  But, if I knew it would likely hurt more.  I can imagine the setting where it would hurt the most and do my best not to think of it.  But that is folly.  I cannot tell myself to not imagine a blue elephant without seeing one in my mind’s eye.

It is the loss of love.  Death is terrible, so final.  Regardless of your religious beliefs it is clear that the remainder of the time you are alive that now dead person will not be here.  In that is an ache that bears down and wrings tears from eyes so red, so tired yet so unrested.  Worse for me is the loss that comes from the living who in one way or another imply they will be happier without me in their lives.  Those who love, leave and then live on.  Those who could stay, but won’t.  It is in that decision to separate in life that the real gut wrenching happens for me and I feel my innards ripped and shredded and the pain in my chest almost overwhelming.  Surely death would be better than this pain, this rejection, this loss.  Why go on?

And yet I do.  I come close, but I do not leave.  I swear I will never love again.  And yet I do, always with fear and trembling that another monster pain is lurking around the corner.  I am skittish fearing early symptoms of that pain, I am prepared to jump before I care too much.  But even when I think I have protected myself I have not.  Someone leaves.  I die.  And I hold on to the hole they have left in my life, the space they took up in my head, the joy they provided when together, and wonder why the hell is it empty now, why did they decide they would be better gone than here where I could love them?  I pray they will return and fill the void.  But that prayer goes unanswered.  Always.  The void remains.  The scars form.  The shell grows more brittle. 

But the pain of heartbreak never goes away.  Each new one resurrects the pain from heartbreaks past and I wonder if somehow I am a magnet for such pain.  Do I somehow cause what I hate the most?  Do I somehow love too much?  Perhaps.  But no one stays long enough to coach me.  They take their heart and run.

I hurt tonight.  Deeply.  Perhaps a kidney stone would help.