heartbreak

“Heartbreak is our greatest teacher, and if so, thank you for making me wise.” — Joe Goldberg

I’ve always been so surprised by the choices people make when they’re heartbroken, especially because sometimes those choices don’t even seem true to who they are. And I don’t mean the version of themselves they show everybody else, because we all perform a little bit for the people around us. I mean who they know themselves to be when nobody else is there. I think heartbreak can make people have this strange fuck it attitude toward their own lives, where suddenly it’s, I have time, I’ll figure it out later, I know I deserve better but I’ll leave when I’m finally ready, I know this person makes me miserable but I don’t want to be alone right now. And maybe that is what bothers me so much about it, because I think people underestimate how valuable their time actually is. You can spend months or years running away from being hurt by keeping yourself surrounded by people who don’t really add anything meaningful to your life, people you don’t even feel understood by, people you would probably never choose if you weren’t so afraid of having nobody there. You begin to question what they value in relationships in their lives. Love, friendship, understanding, laughter, honesty, something. I think there is such a difference between sharing your life with people because you genuinely want them there and keeping people around because their presence saves you from having to sit alone with yourself. I think heartbreak really is one of the greatest teachers we get. I know that sounds strange because when you’re actually going through it, the last thing you feel is grateful, but I genuinely think there are people who go through their entire lives without ever being forced to look at themselves in that way. So when life does hand you that kind of heartbreak, I don’t think the question should always be why did this have to happen to me? Sometimes I think, eventually, you get to look at it and realize how lucky you were to have something painful enough to wake you up. Heartbreak has this horrible way of showing you what you’ve been wasting, what you’ve been settling for, what you actually want, and who you are when all the noise around you finally disappears. And as painful as that teacher can be, I think there is something beautiful about getting the chance to learn from it.

I guess I can’t speak for everyone, because not everybody really gets the chance to sit in heartbreak for very long. And I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. Some people lose the person they genuinely thought was the love of their life and somehow meet someone a week later who ends up actually being the love of their life. Some people lose a job they were devastated about and almost immediately land something better. Some people move away from a city they never wanted to leave and somehow create this completely different life somewhere else that they never even knew they wanted. Sometimes life is incredibly strange and kind like that. Something ends and before you even have enough time to understand why, something else comes along and almost answers the question for you. I think that is beautiful too. I just think it means that not everybody is forced to sit with heartbreak in the same way. Some people get carried almost immediately into whatever comes next, while other people are left with nothing but the loss itself and have to figure out what to do with it.

I think that is where people start making really strange choices. When there is nothing new waiting for them, nothing distracting them, nothing making the pain easier to understand, I think a lot of people just want to make it stop. They don’t necessarily want to learn from it yet. They want company. They want familiarity. They want the person back. They want something that makes life feel normal again, even if the “normal” they are returning to was making them miserable. I’ve had so many conversations with friends who tell me how lonely they are after a breakup, or how unhappy they are in a relationship they cannot seem to leave. They tell me about the same argument, the same disappointment, the same person making them feel horrible about themselves over and over again. They know it isn’t healthy. They know they aren’t happy. They know this relationship looks nothing like the kind of love they have always told me they wanted, and yet somehow they keep choosing it anyway.

And that is where I start wondering what it actually means when somebody says they know they deserve better. Because I believe that they know it. I believe they can say it and understand it logically. They can sit across from me and tell me, “I know I deserve more than this,” and I completely believe that they mean it. But do they actually believe it deeply enough to live by it? I don’t know. I think there is a difference between knowing you deserve something and having enough faith in yourself to actually walk away from what is not giving it to you. If you continually go back to the thing that you say is beneath what you want for yourself, eventually I think you have to ask why. Is it because you don’t really believe something better exists for you? Is it because being alone feels worse? Is it because the pain you know feels safer than the possibility of something you don’t?

I used to think this was completely bizarre, and honestly part of me still does. I understand loving somebody. I understand being attached to someone who is wrong for you. I understand how terrifying it probably feels when someone has taken up so much space in your life and suddenly you are supposed to imagine that space empty. But I also think there reaches a point where loneliness cannot keep being treated like the worst possible thing that can happen to you. There reaches a point where being so afraid of your own company that you would rather remain miserable with somebody else becomes its own problem. I think sometimes we underestimate how peaceful being alone can be because all we can imagine is the first part of it, when everything is quiet and unfamiliar and you miss what used to be there.

It is especially hard when you are watching somebody you love live this way because sometimes you can see their life so clearly from the outside. You know what they have told you they want. You know the kind of relationship they dream about and the places they want to go and the kind of person they want to become. You know how funny they are, how intelligent they are, how deeply they love, and all the things about them that make you think they could have such a beautiful life. So naturally, as their friend, you tell them. You tell them that you don’t think this person is good for them. You tell them they deserve better. You remind them about what they told you after the last fight and how unhappy they were and how many times they said they were finally done. You think you are helping because you love them, and in your mind you are only repeating back to them the things they have already admitted to you themselves.

But I think that can start damaging a friendship in a way people don’t really talk about. Eventually they are going to keep choosing the relationship, and you are going to keep having an opinion about something they are willingly choosing. They tell you how miserable they are, so naturally you begin seeing the person they are with through everything they have told you. Then things become good again and suddenly you are supposed to forget all of it. Maybe they had a beautiful weekend together. Maybe there were flowers. Maybe there was an apology. Maybe everything feels perfect again for a little while. And I think that is where you eventually have to stop trying to make somebody see what you see, because you cannot make another person believe in a better life simply because you believe one exists for them. There are some things people have to learn through their own pain. Sometimes advice is not enough. Sometimes being told that you deserve better is not enough. Sometimes the pain itself has to become the teacher, and I think there is something incredibly painful but also beautiful about that. You can be completely devastated by something and still know, somewhere inside yourself, that it is showing you something you needed to see. You can even feel grateful while you are hurting. Maybe gratitude is not always the first feeling that comes, but I don’t think suffering and gratitude cancel each other out. Sometimes you are grateful because the pain finally made something impossible to ignore.

That does not mean I think it is okay to stay somewhere you know is making you miserable. I don’t. I think people can lose so much time that way, and maybe that is one of the things I have become more aware of as I’ve gotten older. You can stay with somebody because you have history, keep a friendship because you have known each other forever, stay somewhere because starting over sounds terrifying, and before you know it years have gone by. I think we underestimate time because when we are young it feels like there is so much of it. There is always next year, another chance, another time to finally leave, another version of yourself that you swear you will become later. Then later keeps moving.

I think about this a lot with young adults because there is such a strange period where you are still learning who you are while also slowly becoming responsible for who you are becoming. I have so much grace for being young and stupid because I think you are supposed to be a little stupid. You are experiencing so many things for the first time. Your first real heartbreak feels like the only heartbreak anyone has ever experienced. Losing a friendship feels like losing a limb. You are trying to understand relationships and sex and money and school and family and what you want to do with your life while barely understanding yourself. Of course you are going to fuck some things up.

But I also think there comes a point where you have to start paying attention to yourself. Not in some profound self-help way. I just mean actually knowing yourself enough to recognize when something is making you unhappy, when you are acting out of fear, when you are holding onto something because you genuinely love it and when you are only holding onto it because you are afraid of what your life will look like without it. I think growing up is slowly realizing that no one else gets to take responsibility for those choices for you. People can hurt you and life can completely blindside you, but eventually you are still the person who has to decide what happens next.

Maybe that is why heartbreak interests me so much. It has this horrible way of leaving you alone with yourself. The person you used to call is suddenly the person you are trying not to call. The friend you would normally tell everything to might be the person you lost. The life you were comfortable inside is suddenly gone, and for a while there really is nobody to reach for in the same way. There is just you. I think that can feel terrifying at first because maybe you have never had to be that person for yourself before.

But I think there is something really beautiful hiding inside of that.

You start realizing that you are actually capable of comforting yourself. You survive nights you thought you wouldn’t know what to do with. You wake up after days you were convinced would break you. You learn that sadness eventually changes shape if you let it. Maybe you start taking yourself somewhere because you are tired of waiting for someone to go with you. Maybe you start reading again or running again or traveling or doing whatever little things make you feel like a person instead of somebody who has just lost something. At some point you stop waiting for your old life to come back and you start becoming curious about the one that is still here.

And I think that is where heartbreak has been the most beautiful to me. You lose this person or this friendship or this version of your future, and for a while you think the loss has left this enormous empty space in your life. Then slowly you realize that you are filling it. Not with another person. Not immediately, anyway. You fill it with yourself. You learn what your days look like when they belong to you again. You find out what you actually like when nobody else’s preferences are sitting beside yours. You start trusting your own thoughts again. There is something almost comforting about realizing that people will come and go throughout your entire life, but you are the one person you will always have to come home to.

I don’t mean that in the cheesy way where you suddenly decide you don’t need anybody. I think we need people. I love having people. I love loving people. I think there is something so special about having someone who knows you and gets to share your life with you. But I also think there is a difference between wanting people and needing somebody there because you are terrified of what happens when everyone leaves. Heartbreak can teach you that difference in such a painful way. You can miss somebody terribly and still be okay without them. You can wish they were there and still have a beautiful day. You can love someone and still choose yourself when loving them starts costing you too much.

I think that is probably one of the saddest and most comforting things I have learned as I’ve gotten older. People are going to leave. Sometimes because the relationship ends, sometimes because you grow apart, sometimes because somebody dies, and sometimes because life just pulls people in completely different directions. There are people I probably thought would know me forever who will only know one version of me. I also think accepting it has made me appreciate people more, because I know now that having someone in your life is not the same thing as owning their place in it forever.

I also don’t think heartbreak only belongs to romantic relationships. I think your heart can break when somebody dies, when a friendship ends, when your family disappoints you, when you lose the job you thought was going to become your life, when you leave a place you thought you would always call home, or when you simply realize that the future you had pictured for yourself is not going to happen. I think some of the worst heartbreak comes from losing things that technically never existed outside of your imagination. You grieve the life you thought you were going to have, and somehow you still have to wake up and figure out what to do with the one you actually got.

I think that is why I’ve started looking at suffering differently. I don’t think pain automatically makes somebody wiser. People can go through horrible things and learn absolutely nothing from them. Sometimes people become harder or angrier or just repeat the same thing with somebody new. I think the lesson only happens when you are willing to be honest with yourself about what happened, including the parts that hurt your ego. Sometimes that means admitting somebody treated you badly, admitting you stayed even after you knew better, admitting that you ignored yourself because the truth would have required you to do something you were not ready to do.

That realization hurts too, but I think it is part of it. There are things that happen to us that we never asked for, and then there are ways we sometimes keep ourselves inside the hurt after it has already happened. I think heartbreak makes that very difficult to ignore. Eventually there is nobody else left in the room to explain yourself to. You have to sit with the choices you made, the things you knew, the things you ignored, and the person you want to be from that point forward.

Maybe that is why I feel almost grateful for heartbreak, even while knowing how awful it can feel. I don’t think gratitude only comes afterward either. I think you can be completely devastated and still have this tiny part of you that understands something important is happening. You can cry over somebody and know you cannot go back. You can hate that something ended and still know that the ending is showing you things you would have never seen if everything had stayed comfortable. I think those feelings can exist together.

And I think some of the most profound parts of my life have probably happened there, in that weird space where something is hurting me and changing me at the same time.

It is strange to realize that one day the thing you thought you would never survive is just something that happened to you. Not something small or meaningless, just something you lived through. The person you thought you could not exist without becomes someone you remember. The life you thought you needed gets replaced by one you could not have imagined yet. And somehow, through all of that, you become familiar with yourself in a way you probably never would have if everything had gone according to plan.

I think that is the part of heartbreak I find beautiful. Somewhere inside losing someone or something, you find this person who has quietly been there the entire time. Yourself. And maybe you realize that even when everybody else leaves, even when life changes completely, even when you don’t know what comes next, you are still here. You still have to make breakfast the next morning. You still have places you want to see. You still laugh at things. You still get excited about stupid little plans. You still have a whole life happening inside of you.

im rambling