The condition of heartbreak

In my opinion, heartbreak is a diagnosable condition. I personally think it's almost like a cold- you feel it coming, suffer for a few days, but the effects of the illness can linger for weeks and months after the cold itself has finally left your body.

Just like a cold, you can feel heartbreak coming. You can see the conversation coming- a look, non-characteristic behavior, displaced feelings. You see it coming, but you can't stop it and you just keep hoping that maybe you're wrong. Like a cold, you try to excuse away that cough for an allergy, that outburst for a bad day at work. You're rarely wrong.

Once your heart is breaking, your insides feel suddenly cold and explosive at the same time. You literally think you are going to die. Not the "oh I'm going to throw myself off a bridge" kind of die, but the literal "my unhappiness right now hurts so much I think I am literally going to die". This feeling of impending death may last for hours, or basically until you take whatever you need to take and then fall asleep.

Waking up is probably the worst. You get those first few seconds of sweet, sweet amnesia. For those first few seconds, everything is the same as it was before the heartbreak, but not for long. It all comes rushing back, freight train style. Then you panic. And this is when the frantic stage starts, the cold sets up camp. Your mind is racing to keep up with your heart, trying to eliminate feelings of self doubt, rationalize behavior, explain yourself to yourself. It's exhausting, and makes it really hard to get out of bed at all. If you're a reasonable person, you'll know you have to get out of bed, have to distract your mind with work, school, whatever can distract. There's no distracting the heart- it'll keep bleeding and crying and beating it's walls in hopes of repose. But there's no repose yet.

You've still got a few solid days of frantic. You'll talk to friends, talk to God, talk to strangers and yourself, all is hopes of getting your mind wrapped around your heart so it'll feel reposed enough to stop beating it's walls. After a few days, you'll get your first hint that the cough is letting up. One day, you'll wake up (the upswing usually starts upon waking) and your mind will have slowed to a passenger train speed. It's now conversing with your heart rather than frantically screaming at it. You won't really feel relived yet at this point, just not totally crazy.

You'll start to see pretty things again. You'll notice the trees, the sun, a kind act or word. Your world will slowly shift until you realize that you no longer feel overwhelmingly sad, but nostalgic- you miss your old pre-heartbreak life. You aren't crying- you're pining. So many little things remind of your old life, and every little thing pulls viciously at your heart. Your heart is tired, so it just sits there and takes it, but it starts to lose hope of ever being as happy as it was before it was broken.

This period is the post-cold period. The cold is gone, but the cough, the phlegm- it's still consistently there, with no signs of slowing up. You exist in a place between total nostalgia and total hopelessness. This will last for a while. I call this post-heartbreak purgatory. And this one doesn't disappear when you wake up one morning. It'll hang out for weeks, probably months.

But after some time, you realize you're creating new memories. You find a great Petit Verdot, and stop longing for Merlot. A fun new bar to frequent. A new favorite song. Slowly, your life before the heartbreak becomes not something you necessarily long for, but something you consider fondly from a distance.

And then you are there. Your cough is gone. It becomes time to appreciate your determination to overcome and proud of the new life you are creating for yourself. Time to take that old, pretty life you had before and leave it for your heart to admire, but not suffer from it's presence. You survived the heartbreak.

You may still cough once and a while, and unfortunately, just like colds come around more often than not, heartbreak may again find you. At least the next time you'll know what to expect; you'll know what medicine to take. Good friends, good food, good booze, and reminding yourself you won't die. We've all been there- it's practically a diagnosable condition, after all.

My Life Story

So I have this management coach. How I ended up with a management coach is a story for another day, but none the less I have one. I see her twice a month and we are working towards the goal of developing in me a sense of "authentic leadership". To achieve this goal, I have taken personality tests, gone through scenarios and talked at length about my strengths and weaknesses. She usually gives me "homework"- to read some sort of article, take a personality test etc, but this week she shocked the hell out of me by assigning me the task of writing my life story. In two weeks. She said it so nonchalantly. "Oh, and by next time we meet I want you to write your life story. It'll help us to better define and understand your passions and motivations."

First of all, the idea of writing my life story was daunting enough, but to know that from said story I am somehow supposed to glean a better understanding of what moves me- that's downright intimidating. That means my story is going to require actual thought and effort. No "I'm Tracey and I was born in Norfolk, Virginia, liked journalism in high school, eeked by in college and now live happily in Charlottesville with my pet rabbit and too much wine."

How do you find focus when you have to cover twenty-five eventful years? I could focus on tragedies. Divorce, drama, death, dismemberment. They make great book to made-to-TV-movie story lines. And are an easy out for finding personal motivations (ie- my parents divorced so I suck at boys). I could focus on the people in my life and how the have shaped me, for better and for worse. for example, I love working with people because both my parents are pathological extroverts. Life story- done!

Somehow, I don't think it's going to be that easy for me. First of all, I am the most verbose person on the planet. I can't shut up, especially about myself. Second of all, I have been in some pretty hysterical situations in my life, all of which should be accurately and fully declared in my life story. I mean, no "Tracey's Life Story" would be complete without a retelling of the "night I got my first tattoo", the "born again virgin part(ies)", the "I almost streaked the lawn during a hurricane", "that one time in Chicago I got everyone kicked out of a dunkin donuts" and of course, the "easter beer hunt". Retelling these gems and others will obviously take some time, and will probably not actually assist in helping me identify my passions, unless my passions include beer, shameless dancing, donuts or blaspheming the resurrection of Christ.

I think perhaps I could tell my life story by mapping out the things I love. Maybe that's the wrong way of putting it. I love so many people and things. Rather, I think my story should be told by the little things in my life that enable my soul to love in the first place....

My mother's often mediocre but best intentioned suppers
The last faint strands of a steel guitar
Smelling the wax of my board, the salt of the waves and the warmth of the sun
Letting wine replace self doubt
A freshly made bed, with extra pillows
Coffee, but only when shared with the best of girlfriends
Cell phone calls that only end with the life of the battery
The air through the windows at over 80 mph
Purrs, of the feline sort, that calm even the most miserable of days
Sudden realizations of mortality, and in turn, gratitude

An open heart. Lots of mistakes. Too much fun. My life story.