REAL TALK: FEELING THE BREAK OF THE HEART

We’ve felt it. We may have married our second choice. We may still love and long. This is the inspiration for the good stuff. If we look in history, music, poetry, prose, even the most inspirational quotes were from pain, loss, heartbreak.

You get over the basics. There is something deeper though, the love just doesn’t go away, it doesn’t transcend itself onto another. That would be too easy, right? Everyone once in a while, it comes to the surface.

The Complicated Emotional Web We Weave.

Getting over an ex isn’t just willing it away, It’s not the support you get with everyone cheerleading what a “toxic” relationship it was. It’s not the “he’s doesn’t know what he’s missing…” As my cousin, a well-regarded therapist would say, “sit in your shit.”

There you go.

This means, like a sugar craving, you feel it deeply but don’t act. Like a sugar craving, give it 20 minutes and it shall pass. The reality is that sometimes you never quite stop feeling it. Love isn’t an emotion that is easily transferable. It isn’t easily forgotten but it can be fuel.

I think its important to get to know those hard emotions, find the intimacy in them. There is a thought that if you don’t give it “your energy” that, “this too shall pass.” That approach, never really works though, does it? I mean, how effective is it really? Unresolved feelings, are in fact just that. It doesn’t need to be an “Unsolved Mysteries” episode, but leaning in and being curious about yourself and owning your sh*t, is elevating.

Leaping Heart First.

Lately, I’ve heard young people (early 20s) say they fear falling in love. Perhaps it is because, for many safety and comfort was never an experience. The idea of the emotional investment and fear of rejection, is almost paralyzing. The risk of being left open and vulnerable. When you commit to the time of being with someone, knowing that it continues or it ends. 50/50 odds.

Perhaps love is too wild of an emotion. We can’t control it. Is it expected or guaranteed to happen? And yet, it can sneak up on you. It can create heart-pounding, stomach churning emotion that even the scariest of roller coasters can’t give you. We question its authenticity. A lustful emotion masking itself. Still, if you leap heart first, no matter what, you can at least guarantee that your life will be richer for the experience.

We know love’s power but we underestimate the heart’s strength to recover from the pain.

Never underestimate anything. Like Michael Scott says, “maybe next time you will estimate me.” That’s the complicated heart.