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.