Broken Hearts

There’s nothing in the world quiet like a broken heart. It’s the type of thing that leaves you breathless. No matter how old you are, or how much you've learned, broken hearts always hurt the same. My first broken heart came when I was 15 and my dog of 13 years named KC died. It was the first time I'd lost something dear to my heart. It still hurts when I think of her. My second broken heart came when I was 17 and my boyfriend of two years and I broke up. I may have been young but it didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. My mother told me that broken hearts were natural, that everyone has them at some point in their life. I didn’t believe her then, but I know better now. At the time it was the worst feeling id ever felt. I became overwhelmed by the emotion and it took me in a very bad direction. I didn’t talk to anyone about the feelings but people could see how much it was affecting me. It wasn’t until I started spending time with another boy 6 months later that brought me out of my bad time. I’m still seeing him to this day, three years later. The one thing that kept me somewhat sane in all of the chaos was my writing. Even though the writing was never very positive it was a way to organize my thoughts that kept me so occupied. I didn’t talk to my broken heart for almost five years, and then a week ago he called me. Are talk was great, it was the first time I was able to open up and tell him all the things I wanted to all those years ago. We laughed about everything and left nothing off the table. When I hung up the phone I knew that we wouldn’t talk for awhile like before but that was ok. I know in my heart I will always care for him but it took my heart a very long time to heal after him and I would never go down that road with him again. He will always be my best friend in many ways and I owe him so much.
After are talk I started to think about the concept of broken hearts and what it meant to me and other people. The dictionary definition of a broken heart is the following-despair; disillusionment; devastating sorrow, esp. from disappointment in love. Even though all these words hold true they don’t even begin to touch on the actual feeling and process. I asked a friend what her first broken heart felt like, she smiled before she began. "I didn’t eat for awhile, I just wasn’t hungry anymore. I didn’t sleep very well and I cried allot. The crying was the worst part." I asked her again what it felt like and she said she really couldn’t explain it but she would never in a million years be able to forget the feelings. I started to wonder how this felt for boys then. Where the feelings the same? Does it hurt just as bad? Girls really can’t help but put their emotions out there for the world to see, it’s hard for us. Yet with men, they always seem fine. They never show that there hurt or that they feel alone. We spend so much time after a broken heart trying to get the other people to think were ok when the story about the pain is still just as strong as it was yesterday. So then I asked, who would I be without my story. Who would I be if I didn’t have this story in my head? Happy, I would be happy. I had to question every aspect of my story to figure out what was really true. That was the hardest part, yet after I read through all the lines of my "story" I was left with one line, the most important part of the story. Only I can make myself happy. I had never thought about things that way before and for the first time in a very long time I was able to let go of all my stories and be free to start over and live my life. A broken heart may hurt and take the wind out of your sails but it doesn’t mean it’s the end. It only means you have a beautiful opportunity to start over, and that ladies and gentleman is the most amazing part of it all.