The thing about heartbreak  

The thing about heartbreak is that we experience it more often than we think. If we actually knew all the types of heart-breaking we experience on yearly, monthly, weekly and, let’s hope not, daily bases, the memory of a lover who once was would gladly take a few steps back. 

Some might come across as a band-it being ripped off, others like an empty space in the middle of your chest, yet some feel like our whole body is shattering into tiny little pieces even when the love of our lives is standing right beside us, helping us glue ourselves back together when he or she has nothing to do with the broken plates being picked up. 

You see, the thing about heartbreak is that it not only comes in all shapes, sizes and colors but also in a wide array of causes. When we are little, we are taught that there will a come a time when a boy or girl will enter our lives and introduce us to our first broken heart, by not liking us back, by ending a relationship, by not evolving a situationship, or simply, not feeling the same intensity of romantic love we have for them. 

But no one talks about the many other reasons a heart can break, and ache,  even harder,  for motives way beyond the sentimental. Our path would be much easier if we understood that anything around us can break us. Even the smallest thing we ever experience can cause long lasting wounds we never talk about. Wounds that yet unseen, bleed little by little until we are finally ready to start healing them.

The sooner we realize that disappointment, regret, grudge, resentment, rage and so many more words alike are all symptoms of a broken heart, we would take some time to hug ourselves, maybe eat a pint of ice cream and then figure out how our beating core can be nourished. How we can mend what has been broken by a motive not traditionally associated to 

The thing about heartbreak is that it can be found in the disappointment of not fulfilling a lifelong dream, the impotence of not being able to do a thing about it and the lamentations that will be expressed in the days to follow. It can also be found in lost friendships that you thought would accompany you forever. It can manifest itself in an opportunity that you couldn´t grasp withing your fingers or in any other matter that causes a deep emptiness in the middle of your chest.

Grieving is the door opened by heartbreak. But the thing about grief is that it requires a whole new set of blank entries.

-Andrea Lucía @meetmywords