What Heartbreak Taught Me at 32

I’m 43 years old now, but I look back at this diary entry from 2014, and it still resonates with me, so I’m adding it to my posts. Hope it resonates with you as well.

Here goes…

I’m afraid of the dark. I’m 32 years old and I sleep with a night-light on. There’s a part of me who wants to stay single for the rest of my life and then there’s a longing to fall in love again. I do want children. I give decent advice, but Lord knows I don’t follow it.

I also have an addiction. An addiction to what many could argue, the most wonderful feeling in the world; an emotion that grabs hold and invades the body like the disease it is.

Infatuation. 

The disease takes hold, and in an instant, makes me feel like I can no longer control my emotions. And those emotions – elation, happiness, painful joy—are what drive me, what bring me to life. They control me in a way that makes me feel like I can’t say no. I can no longer think with my head, but with some force inside me.

Infatuation is a charade though. Because something happens. Something usually mundane—he chews with his mouth open, or he cracks a bad joke, or he shaves the hair on his face that I found attractive. Or, on the other end, he finds my laugh annoying, or my habits irksome. Either way though, there is heartache associated with the change.

Here are three levels of heartache as I’ve experienced them over the years.

The first is a pain that feels very similar to guilt. I’ve lost all feelings, but I feel depressed because I know I’m about to cause whoever it is a great deal of agony.

It happens—people lose the feeling, and the pain from the breakup comes not from the giant stabbing in my chest, but from knowing that I am going to hurt someone else.

The second type of heartache is deeper but relatively short-lived. My belly aches, my heart is anxious, and I cry a little, but I know I can get over the pain because I have been there so many times before.

I would say most of my break-ups fall into this category. The level of pain varies based on the feelings I had with my ex and how deeply I was invested in the relationship, but in the end, we both knew it is never going to work. Leaving, no matter the reason, was still hard though. There were bursts of crying for a few days or weeks, usually at night right before bed and first thing in the morning, but I was able to move on relatively easily.

And finally, there is the kicker—the one where no other heartache compares. It feels like you’ve entered the seventh layer of Hell and are about to burst into a fire of tears and sobs at any given moment. Those bursts of sadness always hit at inopportune times, too—in the middle of a client meeting or on the train or at dinner with friends. 

I’ve only experienced this type of heartache once, and it changed me. This pain felt like someone jabbed a knife right through my belly button and just gradually turned it in deep, slow circles.

I could not stop crying. Daylight? What’s daylight?? I didn’t move from my bed for a week.  Everything reminded me of my ex. A sweatshirt. The vase of flowers on the dining room table. The cheese grater.

Not that I was going to eat anything anyway.

But the thing is…

Time healed all.

And from heartache, I learned something.

I learned to stop stressing about getting married again.

And this is not to say I don’t want to; I have just decided that I will no longer let the thought of marriage dictate my actions in relationships. If someone isn’t right for me, I don’t force it because I think I’m too old not to. Instead, I let it go and move on.

Because in the end, heartbreak is worth it—if the alternative is a lifetime of charade.