The Vulnerable Post: Heartbreak Hurts
One thing I have learned is that what we go through is never just for ourselves.
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Why would we want to put our pain on display for others to see? Why admit our weakness, our shortcomings, our vulnerabilities?
The reality for me is that most people get to know the output of the healing. For example, everyone knows me as a happy, upbeat, silly, joy-filled individual, which is true. In fact, I am more joy-filled now than ever before. It was the excruciating heartbreak[s] that I healed from that deepened my capacity to love, increased my faith, and connected me to more people than I could have ever imagined. I titled this post the vulnerable post because it is simply that—a vulnerable post. When we only show the output, we cut off the opportunity for connection. I am strong, happy, and confident, AND I also have been unimaginably and guiltily sad about a breakup.
Before we jump into this post, I also want to share one additional reality for context. This blog isn’t a fleeting idea, nor is it birthed from recent heartbreak processing session. I started this journey in 2014, when I experienced my first romantic heartbreak. The years following were filled with missed opportunities for love, hypervigilance for connection, and confusion as to why dating was so da%@ hard.
There is a unique aspect of heartbreak that is lasting; it involves constant reminders, and there is often no closure. I had experienced grief before 2014, but this felt different. It was a pain I hadn’t experienced before. I journaled to heal from it, but at that time, the shame of my hurt [and the desire to protect myself from others seeing my “weakness” or altering their view of me] kept me from sharing.
The beautiful thing about healing is that your pain and vulnerability is no longer taboo. You can talk about it confidently because it becomes a testimony, evidence, your proof of your incredible supernatural properties to overcome. The confidence that I can now speak about my own experience with heartbreak is years of healing, personal self-reflection, relationship with the spiritual world, and, most importantly, divine self-awareness. Yet, in a recent heartbreak, I found myself grateful for great times and at peace with the separation and a hot babbling mess, simultaneously. I am grateful for that pain because when I say I am present with you through what you are experiencing, I can connect with the darkest of times and longest of internal battles of my value, worth, and desperation for romantic love.
You are not alone: Heartbreak is a hot topic, and actually, it always has been. The fact that there is no shortage of blogs, videos, movies, sermons, books, and research on the topic is the first indicator that you are not alone in experiencing heartbreak. There is a plethora of research explaining exactly why heartbreak hurts so freaking bad. Keep an eye out for a post coming later called “Relational Stress: What science says about why love’s got you f*%ked up.” It is a natural desire to want to connect with someone, to seek love and validation. When romantic love comes into our lives, and we perceive it as authentic, it becomes biochemical and neurological blissful fireworks. When you are in awe of these explosive feelings of love, and then they stop suddenly, you’re left alone in an empty field with just the ashes of what it could have been; that feeling can be devastating. So, in this post, I want to keep it real, with the sole intent of validating that you are not alone!
The “embarrassing” stuff: This isn’t one of my researcher posts, so I can only speak from my lived experience and the shared connection I’ve made with some of you. If I can be real with you for a moment, moments of heartbreak were a whole different level of vulnerability. I was vulnerable with myself in unprecedented ways. I made awkward and embarrassing decisions like begging and pleading for his* time. I was hopeless, telling myself that I should have and could have done things differently. When I was alone, I’ve fallen to floors crying, deep with sadness. When no one was looking, I’ve tantrumed into my pillow, yelling how unfair the reality was. In my car, I sang angry songs. At a time, I had impulsive thoughts of self-harm and found comfort and strategy to rebalance by talking it out in therapy.
Somedays, I would reach out for support, and often I was kind to myself. Many times, I regressed. I, at one time, had a diagnosis for functional depression. I spent thousands of hours thinking about my ex*. I lost weight, and I gained weight. I slept too much, and I couldn’t sleep at all. I wrote lots of unsent letters, and lots of texts I immediately wished I could unsend. I compromised my integrity, trying to get his* attention, and I behaved desperately.
It was a balancing act between walking away, confidently with my head held high, and crying a treadmill at the 24-Hour Fitness gym [lol it’s okay to laugh, it’s pretty funny now :)].
I ran through a field hysterically. I fell to my knees and prayed. A balance of highs and lows; confidence and questions.
The embarrassment really came because I thought I was better than all of these emotions. The embarrassment was also because I felt those actions were uncharacteristic of me. [BTW I have been doing some research on how to better manage those actions (driven by emotion/feelings), which I will share with you, and maybe help you not send that regrettable text or perhaps to send that healing message.] However, I reframe that embarrassment by allowing myself to see the humanism the experience. I am not the first, and I certainly won’t be the last. Also, we grieve because we have an enormous capacity to care. I cared about the separation, about the loss of friendship and companionship, and most importantly, I cared that it hurt me.
What we want to make sure is that as we process our heartbreak, we prioritize our own healing and ensure we don’t harm others, don’t harm ourselves, and certainly don’t let others harm us.
Processing isn’t one size fits all: You may relate to that last section, or maybe not at all. That is okay. Heartbreak and being single is profound and fluid. Perhaps you don’t display emotion the same way but spend a lot of time trying to understand [or avoiding thinking about] where things went wrong. Maybe, you feel strongly about your worth, and it bothers you that someone else couldn’t see or value your worth. I exhausted myself trying to convince someone [who hurt me] that they made a mistake because I saw my worth greater than they did. This is an important place to assess personal boundaries and limitations.
Regardless of how you process your emotions, confronting heartbreak is vulnerable and necessary. It has helped me to understand these feelings than to avoid them. For example, you may have a fantastic ability to see the best in others and to have hope and optimism for change. Wanting to hold onto that relationship may be connected to your desire to work tirelessly to manifest the good in not only in yourself but also in others. That is a beautiful trait, and also may have you holding onto people and things that are limiting your capacity! Perhaps you’re a little spicy and confident in thinking that you, alone, could heal and fix a relationship of incompatibility. Yeah, I know when you put my mind to something, you make it work, you grind, you hustle, and you apply that same mentality with relationships. However, a relationship will never flourish on just your own determination, it requires two people [at least lol] to be willing to commit to self-growth, vulnerability, openness, forgiveness, patience, love, and critical self-awareness. This is me just be being brutally honest with myself; however I suspect a lot of folks can relate.
Maybe you’ve been lied to, cheated on, emotionally abused, neglected, gaslit, ghosted. I can be honest enough to say I’ve been in similar situations before. I share this because I want you to feel supported and to let you know you are not alone. The truth is, whether it is my story, or another person in another part of the world reading this blog too, you are not alone. Having the ability to zoom out and realize that the relatability to my baby blog and the thousands (probably more) of other books, the never-ending list of blogs, and vlogs, and social media accounts, and songs, and art, and poetry, committed to this very topic of heartbreak is a testament that you are not alone. It is your season (maybe a short one, maybe a long one) to experience heartbreak, rejection, and loss of romantic and intimate love. Your rollercoaster of processing and healing doesn’t define you, it’s helping you break loose of the restrictions that were once upon you, and you are elevating to a newer level of all the characteristics you pride yourself in having.
I want to emphasize a point before we close out this post [it’s covered in more depth in a post called “Your broken heart saved you.”] The point is this; you experienced a hard stop. The relationship ended abruptly or slowly dissipated out of your grasp. Perhaps that happened because of who you are. You are strong, resilient, a fighter, and you don’t quit, even sometimes at the cost of your suffering. So, that hard stop hurts bad AF, but it is saving you from yourself. Whether you attribute it to God, the Universe, Cosmos, or even your consciousness protecting you, find gratitude. Did the person add value? Was that relationship what you needed or merely what you wanted. I am not suggesting our wants aren’t necessary; I just want to put out there that we can also prioritize our needs. Consider what you need. Maybe, you need to be well, you need to live out your purpose, you need to express and receive love, you need to shine so others can be inspired, you need to feel fulfilled, you need to heal, you need to experience authentic joy, you need protection from people and things that don’t make your better… You want to be connected to that person…whomever they are, but do they add value to your needs?
*throughout this, I sometimes refer to his/him/ex. Foremost, I acknowledge that this experience is non-binary. Further, there isn’t one particular person represented in my blog. I am referring to the collective experience in a singular form. LOL, hey you may have been wondering.