We all know heartbreak. Liz Furl writes about the kind we unleash on ourselves.
___
Most commonly, other people will break your heart.
But sometimes …
… sometimes you will have to break your own.
Let me tell you what I mean.
A time will come when love pours over you like the endless gush of a waterfall, but instead of being cleansed in the water, you’re beaten down into the rocks below.
|
A time will come when love pours over you like the endless gush of a waterfall, but instead of being cleansed in the water, you’re beaten down into the rocks below.
You can’t stand.
You can’t breathe.
You can’t think of anything beyond the constant pressure on you neck, shoulders, and back.
This is where the choice comes: you can be buried beneath this love, or you can move out from under it.
The cascade will feel strange, all the stranger depending on how long you’ve bathed in its shower. The lightness will be welcome, but something will be lacking.
The pressure of this love may not always have been this strong, this brutal.
Like the proverbial frog in the ever-heating pot of water, you may not have noticed the flow increase until it became too much to bear.
And even then, there are questions. Was it always this way? When this is onslaught begin? How long has this love been pushing me down? When was the last time I was happy?
♦◊♦
Looking back at your love that has become beyond bearing, there may be answers, fragments of answers, or no answers at all. There will be questions, potential revelations, and probably no resolutions.
And then … your heart will begin to break.
It may shatter like a glass dropped from a height. It may fracture like an ankle rolled from a curb. It may simply throb like the place left after a tetanus shot—the medicine injected hurts and helps (for a time) in equal measure.
|
It may shatter like a glass dropped from a height. It may fracture like an ankle rolled from a curb. It may simply throb like the place left after a tetanus shot—the medicine injected hurts and helps (for a time) in equal measure.
But you can breathe without inhaling liquid. You can stand without being pushed down. You can roam free of this love, at least for a time, and see who you are without it.
Because you don’t need it and it doesn’t need you. You may want a person, love a person, come to rely and count on a person, but you never need a person. It is okay to walk away. It is okay to wander off and see the sights of the world, separate from the shield of mist. It is okay to live for a while separate from your love.
There is no guarantee that you won’t feel pain. It may beat you round the head all day with missing someone. It may exist as a shadow that only just touches you but you can’t outrun. It may stay, for the most part, away, only nipping at your heart every now and again. But you can’t avoid the pain of change. By walking away, you have guaranteed it.
You may return to the crashing falls of love to find their force lessened or yourself strong enough to bear it. You may divert a portion of the river to lighten the load or sit peacefully in in the mists instead of under the tumultuous shower. You may determine that you won’t return at all and seek out new love, new wonders, a new life away from what you’ve known.
But if you find yourself crushed under the flood of someone else’s love, find the courage to break your own heart—if only to see how you can mend it again.
Photo—L.C. Nøttaasen/Flickr