Broken Hearts

Breaking a heart isn’t considered a serious crime.  Sometimes I think it should be.  While theft sets you back a flat screen TV or a large chunk of cash, a broken heart leaves you with feelings of worthlessness, despair, and confusion that lasts a lifetime, or what seems to be a lifetime.  I’ll take the stolen TV over my heart any day.

Time heals all wounds, they say.  I say new experiences and encounters heal wounds.  It may take a few weeks, it may even take a few decades. 

 The way I see it, a person is granted one delicate heart when they are born.  With good experiences it grows, with bad it becomes fractured.  And when it falls in love with another person, it starts giving pieces of itself away.  As that person shares with and confides in the other, they take parts of their heart and entrust it to them.  One always hopes that this entrusting turns out for the best, allowing them to grow with the other person.  This leaves them with bigger hearts than when they started, even after giving the other person pieces of it.  But so many times it turns out for the worst.  The person may leave and drop the pieces at their door when they go, but their heart is still this worn out quilt with missing patches.  They cannot place the pieces back into the heart.  They have been altered, misshapen from what the other person has done to them. No amount of stitching or mending can fix what has been done.  It’s permanent.  And now all they’re left with is a damaged heart, its missing segments lying at their feet.  

Even though the heart cannot be repaired, it can still grow.  The heart can’t take back the old pieces it gave away, but it can grow and fill in those missing areas.  The only catch is that that growth requires a lot of care and patience.  Here is a list of the things I believe aid in the healing and growing process. 

-Eye opening experiences: Traveling, spontaneous activities, learning new hobbies

- Befriending people that adopt open-mindedness

- Nature

- Seeing the humor in everyday occurrences.

- Charity

- Prayer

- Silence

It may feel like your heart will never be fully healed.  That all of the fractured relationships you have been through have done you in.  It may feel like you will never be able to get over those constant feelings of loneliness, heartache, and disconnect.  That those empty spaces will always be there and that no amount of care will heal or allow your heart to grow.

But I promise you, it will.