Personal Log 25 January 3307
25 Jan 2021Quriosyty
‘Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.’I often wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. I remember mine breaking, but I do not recall the sound it made. I think, therefore, it must be quiet - imperceptibly so - and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of a feather drifting slowly to the ground.
The more I think about it the more I find it unnervingly chilling that there is no sound when a heart breaks. Spaceship accidents end with a bang, falling ends with a thud, even writing makes the reassuring sound of fingers on keyboard. But the sound of a heart breaking is completely silent. Almost as though no one, not even the universe itself could create a sound for such devastation. Almost as though silence is the only way the universe could pay respect to the horror of a heart falling apart.
It is shocking. The kind of shock that renders you speechless, motionless, overwhelmed. And after the shock comes realisation; slowly at first and then it crashes down on you with a force that you feel you will be unable to bear. I think that, for a brief moment, you don’t want to bear it – you want it to bury you, crush you, obliterate you. But you know you have to carry on, to move. You take a step and don't want to take any more, yet you do.
You see, hearts get broken. But I think that once you have put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you are never quite the same, you're never what you were before. Perhaps this is what the stories mean when they call somebody heartbroken. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides feel empty and hollow and aching, and you stop being who you were. Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't. I know my heart will never be the same but I'm telling myself I'll be okay.
When you experience loss, people say you’ll move through the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. What they don’t tell you is that you’ll cycle through them all every day. And make no mistake. No matter how bad your heart is broken, the world doesn't stop for your grief and it doesn’t wait for you to cycle through the five stages. It just keeps going and waits for you to catch up.
Grief is sometimes almost like a specific location, a coordinate on the map of your life. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. I don't think anyone can give you advice when you've got a broken heart. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope. My grandparents would like to have given me that hope, but their grief was as deep as mine … perhaps even deeper. They weren’t able to help. But not because they didn’t want to. They simply couldn't. Help did finally come, however, in the form of a friend.
I think perhaps I will always hold a candle for my parents – even until it burns my hand. And when the light has long since gone, I will be there in the darkness holding what remains, quite simply because I cannot let go.
I suppose heartbreak can be lived with - if it isn't accompanied by regret.