A letter to every fractured heart

 

Hello there!

You look beautiful today. (in case you are a man, replace that with handsome). You look amazing, despite whatever you have been through. But am sure, you are not at your best.   You have been better. And you want to be better….and you want that real quick.

I know how it is..I have been there – rejected, neglected, abandoned. It hurt…real bad. I felt angry. I felt let down by the same people, who I trusted with my vulnerability. But let me tell you a secret. Whenever they did all that to me, I hugged myself tightly and said, “Don’t worry sweetheart…you have me. I will never leave you. I will take care of you”. And I believed in those words. And kept the faith alive, till I successfully kept that promise.

There are a lot of to-do lists out there –

Things to do after you break-up

Things to do when you feel empty

Things to do when life seems meaningless

A ton of them.

I have read every tiny bit of content in those articles….even the advertisements on those pages, in hopes, I find a magic potion that would heal me instantly. If you are walking those roads of instant gratification, let me tell you, pain is more resilient than we think.

The quicker you want the hurt the go away, the longer it will take. The more hurt it will cause. The more impatient you will get. And the loop gets tediously endless after that.

I say, emotional pain is very much like physical pain.

Tell me something…When we fall down and bruise our knee, what do we do? Go visit the spot again and again? Curse the road? Get angry with the rock that we tripped over? Numb our brains into thinking why we could not have been more careful? Beat ourselves down for having taken that walk ever?

No, right? We tend to the bruise. Wait for that skin to come back, (I make the scar a point of humoring the child within me too). We patiently and lovingly rest our knee till we can walk again without a limp. RIGHT?

Then why not do the same to our hearts?

I wish so strongly, you be kinder to your heart! Put the bandages on. It will pain and sting. But that’s exactly how it is meant to be!

Start wth cleaning the wound.

Forgive. Forgive yourself. Don’t beat yourself down for taking that walk. Forgive that rock. It didn’t know it was going to hurt you.

When you don’t forgive, you are sort of securing the daggers that have been stabbed into you. We gotta get those blades out and tend to those bleeding spots! We can’t secure the daggers, relive the pain every moment and curse the dagger.

It’s in the nature of daggers to stab. It’s in the nature of people to hurt. And trust me, given a choice, they would not have. They don’t have much of a choice themselves. Always remember, guilt hurts more than rejection. So if you are writhing in pain, they are not at peace too, if that’s what causes you surprise. (That’s what surprised me. I have spent nights worrying myself about how they could do that to me! Did they not know any better? No…they did not)

Don’t make the road or the rock, your responsibility.

Dogs bark and bite. It comes along with the unconditional love and loyalty and oh those puppy eyes. That does not mean you send every barking dog to be put down. You have the right to be frustrated and hurt and worried about not being bitten again. Whatever you do after, must ensure your safety, not fix the dog.

If they hurt you, that’s about them. It’s not about you. Why they did it is not your business anymore. They are not your responsibility. Just bask in the belief that you were good and providing throughout. The fact that they could not secure your goodness, does not talk about your worth. It talks about theirs’.

I have learnt this the hard HARD way. I grew so angry, I would actually imagine them coming to me to ask for forgiveness and explain why they hurt me. That never happened. And I grew angrier and angrier and angrier….till one day, I collapsed in my own anger. It had to flow out of my system. I cried and cried….not because they didn’t explain and apologize, but because I was so stupid, I was hurting myself with my own anger.

What you think in your head, impacts your body. It does not have the slightest impact on their heart. Your body is your precious Lamborghini. Don’t waste its fuel.

Some closures never come. And that’s okay

It’s amazing how people blurt out the truth unknowingly.

In one of my relationships, a while after I broke up, I called up my ex to tell him how angry I was and what he could do about it. (And felt worthless immediately). He did not apologize. Just kept silent. And then I told him I needed a closure(Extremely naive of me). He kept silent for sometime, and said…”But there is no closure”.

It kept me stunned for a moment. Trust me, that was my closure. I realized I was dating a moron, who was so messed up in his head, he could not think of words to say to me.

Nothing matches the feeling, when you can give closure to yourself and move on with your life.

Stay away from a replacement for Pete’s sake!

I have gotten into rebounds and no matter how rosy they feel initially, they suck at the end. People are hurt, it starts to feel unreal after a point in time, wounds are fresh and it’s more like drinking yourself to oblivion to escape the pain, rather than tend to them.

No matter how lucrative the dating offer seems right now, say no. Dating is not a weapon to feel better. There are hearts involved again, and when your heart is wounded and aching, it cannot love smoothly.

Ever heard of anyone running a marathon a week after leg fracture?

No going back to the same old road and cursing it, please!

Rumination – It’s one of the weapons that our egos use against us, to massage itself.

After people (family, friends, lovers) hurt us, it might seem natural, and to a point soothing, to keep reminding yourself of what they have done. I even used to tell myself – “Don’t forget what they have done. You might forgive them and be nice to them again”. Bullshit.

There is a fine line between our body’s natural defense mechanism and cancer. When you fall down, your wound immediately has a layer of coagulated blood, the skin around feels sore and the area reddens. Perfectly natural.

When you have a heartbreak, you cry, you feel like not doing anything, you return their stuff to them, you block them and you don’t want to have anything to do with them. Many-a-times, after a very intense relationship ends, you might feel numbed and handicapped too! Perfectly natural.

But when you start dwelling over the incident, your wound turns cancerous. You start eating away at your own heart, your own capacity to love. You see, love is love….pure and unbiased. We take care of ourselves with the same love that we use to take care of our loved ones. When we start eating away at our own love with anger and rumination, we actually run out of chances of loving ourselves too!

Rumination takes us back to when we hurt. And we hurt again and again. And we fall into a never-ending pit of destruction.

Remember, every time a rose bush is pruned, it only lushes back.

Your heart has the power to heal, to be amazing and beautiful and loving again.

Never think that you would run out of love! It’s not some sort of fossil fuel! It’s the power with which the universe got made, and it’s endless. You only need time.

Every time you are hurt, every time you feel like this is the end, remind yourself – every end has a beginning. And what’s reborn, is, without exception, more beautiful than what died.

No hurt has the power to take away the essence of your soul. That’s impossible. And if your mind is telling you something like that, scold it. Ask it to shut up. And believe that love is the only thing which is immortal.

It’s only the person who has gone…the body changed. There will be another body, brighter, kinder, more compassionate, more understanding, more giving, more caring…more loving.

No matter what happens, you will live, and you will flourish. Don’t let their actions define your nature.

Always remember, you are beautiful and scars only enhance your beauty. Don’t let your wounds and scars beat you down and humiliate you. Be proud, you braved it all. You inevitably, have come out stronger and kinder. Retain that love and bask in its limitlessness.

Extending to you, all the love and faith that I have in me –

Yours’

A healed heart that was once aching.