Checkin' Out of Heartbreak Hotel

Artwork by ~shadrad

A blogger friend asked recently how she should nurse a broken heart when she loses someone whom she loves very much.

Where matters of the heart are concerned, unfortunately, one cannot subscribe to a response/reaction template or formula. It differs from time to time, and varies from circumstances to circumstances.

When I was younger (young and hot by the way!), breakups are common. Guys checked in and out of my life, and I thought it was just a process of growing up and finding myself. I hardly beat myself up over it because I knew there will always be someone else. Losing someone was awful no doubt, but I'd never allowed it to take precedent over other aspects of life - such as friends, work, family, school, hobbies etc. I figured it was not that I was being flippant, but rather, my priorities were somewhere else, something else.

If a guy leaves me for whatever reasons, he could always be replaced by someone who may be more loving, less argumentative, more financially well-off, less clingy, more understanding, less unreasonable, more sensitive, less promiscuous.....and the list goes on. I've always felt an unsupressable need to move on, either as a way to cope with the temporal pain/heartache or as a form of self-justification that it wasn't really my loss, but his.

I also convinced myself that grieving over lost love for too long was a waste of time. I wanted to make the best use of my time because I am one who believes strongly that time is perishable and once I miss today, I could never relive it again. Today only happens once in your lifetime. And that goes for every other day in your life too.

Then I grew up and something changed inside me. Relationships began to matter much more. I took it more seriously because I wanted to stop moving from one fleeting love to the next. It became more tiresome to start from scratch every time - getting to know someone and allowing him to understand you back. It became harder and harder to let go as you grow older. The need for stability and finding a person you can entrust your feelings to forever (if forever exists) became more pronounced.

I am actually not the best person to give an advice on how to move on, having been someone who has wallowed in a pity party alone for four years before breaking out of a self-induced imprisonment. It was torturous to say the least. But I needed time. Time off to think about the self-destructive relationships that I put myself through all the time. Time to gain my confidence back. Time to know what kind of guy I really want in my life this time. And I needed time to thoroughly heal the heart that refused to stop bleeding.

If there's one thing that can help you check out of Heartbreak Hotel, it's not your conviction to forget. It's not who you date after that failed relationship. It's not how much you cried your heart out and how many people you talk to about it. It's not about sticking needles in a voodoo doll with his name on it, or hating him with all the blood in your veins.

It may sound corny, but time does really heal. It is amazing how in the moment of pain, that concept is almost unbelievable. But unknowingly, the pain lessens. The hurt diminishes. The feeling of betrayal fades. And all the pent up anguish and misery - become more and more undefinable. It will come a point when you wake up one day, and realise you have absolutely ziltch feelings towards that person who has hurt you so bad when he walked out of your life. And you begin to wonder where all that excruciating pain went.

Time is undoubtedly, the best healer of all wounds - both physical and emotional. Give yourself time and space and allow your heart to mend itself. By forcing yourself to forget about it would only amplify the damage, slowly but surely.

Though for me, writing can be strangely therapeutic. And hence, I write, I blog, I rant. Somehow it catalyzes that healing process.

"Time heals what reason cannot."

~ Seneca (Roman philosopher, mid-1st century AD)

"Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish;

Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal." ~ Thomas More

"Healing takes courage, and all of us have courage,

even if we have to dig a little to find it. ~Tori Amos