How To Face Your Heartache

Heartache isn’t something you are able to rush and get over with quickly.

Just like each of us have different levels of pain tolerance, we each heal at different paces.

And the deeper the love, the more the painful it will be.

Everything hurts right now because you felt something real.  The numbness will set in.  Don’t let it overtake you, though.  Don’t let the numbness of your heart and body’s self-preservation mode take over your brain.  Just allow it to make the pain dull, instead of sharp.  It will still be painful…and this is because the relationship or crush or experience was something more to you than just the physically-attracted aspect of it.  You were going out on a limb to answer the call of your natural human heart to care for another person.  And that’s something you should never feel guilty for or regretful of.  To love is part of being a human.  And so is pain.

‘But why?’ you may ask.

Ah but why not?

Sure, life may be easier to face while being closed off to love.  It might not be as dangerous.  It might not lead to as much pain.  It would certainly be less complicated and flexible.  But it would also, most definitely, be less colorful, less full, and not as…alive.  Love and pain are companions.  You can’t have one without the other.  Either love ends and you feel pain, or love continues for the rest of your life and pain will happen because people are human and humans are stupid and crap happens.  So love can either be an island prison or a blessing to have the opportunity to love someone so much that it hurts.

You feel pain because you truly felt love.  I know this may be the worst possible thing to hear right now but – be thankful for it.  Be thankful that you can feel, that you did feel.  Remember how that love made you feel.  And remember that you, yes you, are capable of falling in love again.  Not right now.  Maybe not even soon.  But it is possible.  And the more suffering you experience from this heartache, the more you will cherish your next love.

You will have moments of sobbing.  You will have times of teary-eyes that are quickly blinked away. Or you will have break-downs in store aisles as memories flood you and their presence is so real and so tangible.  You will have moments of tranquil outside appearances but on the inside, your heart is crumbling like an old abandoned castle.  Memories will haunt you and their ghost will suddenly appear right before your eyes.  Don’t try to ignore it.  Don’t push it away.  Face it.  You don’t have to forget them or erase them entirely from your memory.  You cared about them enough to love them.  The only thing that has changed is how, not why.

“Just embrace the fact that you are going to hurt for a while, that you loved someone courageously and it did not work out, that you cannot regret anything or question anything because all you did was in love and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Every day you will have something new to face.  And every day you will react differently.  You will ponder on it differently.  You will be in an endless spiral, facing a problem on day #32 that you thought you already dealt with on day #8.  And that’s okay.  Don’t try to plan out your healing process.  Don’t try to even understand it.  Let yourself feel.  Let yourself heal.  In your own time and pace.
Heartache is scary.  It’s as if you had it altogether one moment and the next, everything is in ashes.  Your mind and heart are two completely different things, but they are both a wreck of emotions.  You can’t think of anything or anyone else except that one person.  Your mind will tell your heart to stop thinking about them, to get over it, to move on.  But your heart won’t be able to listen.  You need to separate the two from each other.  Let your heart heal on its own and decide when it is time, when it can be whole again.  And let your brain calm down and be a guide instead of a commander.  You’re a wreck of emotions.  And that’s okay.  It takes time to heal.  Pain doesn’t dissipate overnight.  It’s a process.  And the agony you go through will only succeed in making you more alive, more sensitive, more keen to life and the beauties it holds.  It will make you more real than you’ve ever been before, because you, as a whole, have experienced a new part of life.  People who don’t experience heartache will never know the happiness that rests outside of their little bubble.  They will be happy, but they won’t have anything to compare it to.  Whereas you, knowing what happiness is and isn’t, will understand, once you find it again, just how powerful true love is.