Full and Broken Hearts

It hurts to feel deeply; it hurts to not feel at all.

It’s 7pm on Friday, and I’m driving to LA to visit my friend Jen. I’m listening to the new Fall Out Boy album, a great one if you like pop-punk, and the sky is pink and setting. Jen is a friend I’ve trusted entirely from the day we met, years ago in Boston, during the inordinately intense summer of my first real heartbreak. Remembering this, passing by the ocean on I-5 North, I am overwhelmed with love for the life I’ve lived until now; at the same time, for the one that continues to find me.

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I’ve been thinking of heartbreak a lot, lately. Last September, when my heart was very broken, I retreated to Jen, who reminded me that life is still magical and sweet; that there are many people to know and love, and experiences to be changed by. That trip reminded me of the potential greatness of what has yet to come; also, that the way we approach the unknown largely impacts the flavor of it. Believing that the future can be even more beautiful can help make it so.

That last heartbreak was unbelievably sad. It was, perhaps, the first time I remember feeling that sad, the first time I let myself all the way into the depths of the pain that was stored in me. It was as though I was crying through a lifetime of tears: for the past, for the present, and for the theoretical future I’d thought I wanted. For a while afterwards, it felt like my entire life was crumbling around me; everything that was (apparently) no longer working simply began to die. Some people refer to these kinds of life-altering experiences as initiations, and this felt acutely true: I was being initiated, whether I liked it or not, into a new version of myself and my life. I remember on one pivotal morning, the tears arrived without any thoughts attached to them—it was pure emotion, no mind. I felt very much in my body: aware that I was the one inside, watching my body cry, and that I could do nothing about it. When the tears stopped, abruptly and completely, I felt incredible, like I was walking on air. If that relationship had to die, I remember thinking, so must my old self. Moving on.

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The rate at which you move on after an ending need not be moralized: it’s complex, and varies. Not all endings will initiate radical change, but all can be opportunities to transform and start anew. The more fully you can accept reality, and stop clinging to the desire for things to be different, the better off you are likely to be. Every new beginning carries the possibility of being even more to your taste, and the more you can let go, the easier it becomes to move into this potential.

This weekend, in LA, I feel tremendously full of love. My life has changed dramatically since September in ways I could not have predicted; I cannot be bothered to try and figure out how it will change next. I keep holding the beliefs that life can be fun and beautiful and surprising, that I can handle it all, and that all of it is worth feeling.

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You don’t need to be grateful for heartbreak, or smile through the pain. You can just let your heart be broken; you can just feel it all. Things will change, and so will you. Maybe, someday, you will in fact find that the most heartbreaking events were the ones that left you most transformed. Maybe, you’ll discover the truth in this Mary Oliver poem: “Someone I loved once gave me / a box full of darkness. / It took me years to understand / that this, too, was a gift.”

Hearts will continue to break because life continues to be full of love. May we let them break, and let love continue to find us.

May we feel it all, and may we let it all go.

Maggie