Heartbreak

I’ve come to realize there are two different kinds of heart break.

First, there’s the cliched heartbreak you watch unfold between two star crossed lovers in a Rom Com, or claim to feel when your high school boyfriend breaks up with you. It hurts, you’re sad, cry a couple tears, listen to a couple angsty records and within a relatively small amount of time you’re fine.

Then, there’s the real kind of heartbreak. The kind of heartbreak that consumes you. Drives you to complete paralysis and leaves you for dead. The kind of heart break where you can feel your entire physical being ache from the inside out.

A tingling feeling comes into your nose, like you need to sneeze but worse. The tears start to form, your eyes fill up with water and suddenly you’ve got .10 seconds to avoid letting a tear roll down your face. When the waterworks really start, however, there’s no turning back. Your mouth starts to quiver as if you’re about to weep, but not quite yet. There’s a weight more powerful than yourself pressing down on your entire being, forcing you to begin breaking down.

The only think I can equate this to is realizing you have a leaky roof in the middle of a hurricane. You can push against the leak, but its all too far gone. All you can do is place a bucket underneath the drips and hope it stops soon.

Now, you’re weeping. A low, pitiful sound comes from your quivering, gaping mouth as the tears flow freely down your face. Your neck is wet from crying- Suddenly, your mouth stops emitting sound, you’ve wept and cried out so hard nothing else can come out any longer.

Its as if the pain in your heart wont allow your brain to gather itself quickly enough to produce sound, as if your feelings from inside are too powerful to be expressed through words outside. The all consuming sadness is so strong that no volume of weeping or wailing from your mouth can match what you feel inside.

Your heart aches, and not like a cramp in your leg after you’ve run too far. It starts as if you’ve just eaten something spicy, and your chest grows warmer and constricts tighter. You wonder when someone placed an hot anvil on your chest, as its the only feeling close enough to describe the immense feeling deep inside your chest, the heavy, struggle for breath as if 100lbs are weighing directly down onto your lungs. Everything feels hot and tight, but then it gets worse. It’s deeper than a burning, pressing sensation now- it feels like nothing you’ve felt before, like the scars and weak points that have been left on your heart from past heart aches are beginning to open up, slowly and without cessation. You begin to feel numb, all you can feel is the warm, hot swelling in your face, the redness and puffiness inside and surrounding your eyes, your mouth gasping for air as your body produces more tears than you would’ve ever thought possible. Everything is wet, your face, your neck, your hands, whatever poor article of clothing you’ve been desperately attempting to use to wipe away the sadness, spit up, and snot with since this episode started.

Suddenly, your heart no longer aches.

Suddenly, your heart feels as though its simply been ripped in two and left in your chest cavity to somehow mend itself.

You’ve been left for dead.

Suddenly, the tears that fell from your eyes, are replaced with a shaking sensation that starts in your hands as you try to wipe your face dry, smudging remnants of “waterproof” mascara and overpriced foundation around a pool of salty tears. The shaking moves to your arms, down to your legs, then your feet, suddenly it feels as if you’ve been left outside in the middle of winter without a coat. But it isn’t the same. The shaking is uncontrollable, but not the same as a shiver, its exhausting and all consuming. Parts of your body feel ice cold while others feel red hot. The best I can think to explain the reason for this is your body’s next attempt at weeping to expel the sadness when for so long no sound could be made.

The shaking stops. You pray this is all over, but now you’re wailing again.

No tears fall from your eyes as you’ve exhausted seemingly all the water in your tiny, broken body. Your ribs feel as if they’ve collapsed in towards your spine. You grasp at your chest, clenching your fists in frustration. You are emotionally spent, your brain begins to pound, so much so that it feels as if it could ooze through your ears and out of your skull. Your head is a tea kettle full of water thats just reached its boiling point under a tight lid. The pressure is insurmountable. No amount of breathing or pressing of your temples will satiate it now.

So you begin to weep again.

You weep for whatever it was you began to weep for, you weep for your broken heart, you weep for your inability to weep anymore, and you weep for the emotional and physical pain and exhaustion you have been forced to endure.

There is a difference between forms of heartbreak. One hurts, and one completely debilitates.