The definitive guide to heartbreak
I’ve been there. And now I’m here to help you
I know: I don’t know what you’re going through. I don’t know the sound of his voice down a lonely telephone line, the way his eyes glow in the autumn gloom, the shape of his thumb on the nape of your neck, or the way he kisses you like you’re made of glass. I don’t know what his arm feels like around your waist, the electricity you feel when he reaches for you in the dark, or the way his name sounds in your mouth. Your grief is fractural, unique, written in lines of a language only you speak, experienced in a body only you have experienced the edges of. I don’t know your love, and I don’t know your pain. But I do know that you’re going to get better.
Heartbreak is, easily, the worst thing I’ve ever, ever experienced. And I say that as a rape survivor, a child who grew up with a critically ill parent, and a woman who survived crippling psychological abuse. Absolutely nothing life threw at me was as bad as those first bitter months of life without him. Knowing he didn’t love me, knowing he wasn’t coming back, knowing he was in the arms of someone knew. Knowing I couldn’t pick up the phone and hear that wonderful thick, soft low voice say my name, knowing I’d never open my letterbox again to a beautiful letter in round careful handwriting. I lay in the dark for the longest time. The…
