Breakups are a part of relationships. Someone once told me, "You either marry someone or you break up with them." This is a harsh reality, but it sheds some light on how frequent breakups are and how crushing they can be. We invest in someone hoping for the possibility of marrying them; then it ends. This makes breakups some of the most difficult times for people to go through. Breakups often leave us in ruts that are hard to get out of. This was very true for myself when I went through a breakup. It was one of the toughest times of my life and nothing was able to get me out of the rut.
For a month after my breakup, I was in a deep rut. I could not find anything to distract me or take my mind off what happened. There was a hole left in my heart that I could not forget. This is the struggle of almost every breakup—we get something taken out of our life so suddenly that we are thrown into a rut. These ruts are hard to escape.
That was until I looked through YouTube and came across an interesting music video. The music video was for a song called "Tear in My Heart" by Twenty One Pilots. I decided to give it a listen, and after I finished the music video, I just listened to it again and again and again. It was one of those songs that spoke into my life exactly when I needed to hear it.
The song talks about the feelings of being in love and discusses an uneven relationship in which one member is more invested than the other. But the main line in the song is the phrase "tear in my heart." The song talks about the scars that are left when someone leaves our lives.
When we let someone into our heart, it grows around them; when they leave, they must pull themselves out of our heart, leaving a scar—a "tear in our heart." Sometimes these tears are small and heal quickly and aren't noticeable. Other times, these tears never fully heal and leave a lasting impact on us.
I had a tear in my heart.
This was what I finally learned about my breakup after hearing this song... If we put ourselves out there and are in a relationship with someone, we are opening ourselves to the possibility of our hearts being torn. This is the cost of love. If there was no chance of harm, then it wouldn't be love. There has to be a risk of injury in order for us to be in love.
The odd thing was that this song pulled me out of my rut. I realized that as painful as breakups can be, if I want to find someone I want to marry, I will have to experience heartbreak. Even when I find the person I am to marry, there is still the chance that they will hurt me, but that is love.
I learned that there will be tears in my heart and that these tears will remain and I won't be able to fully heal from them by myself; it takes time, space and sometimes, it takes something or someone else filling the hole for us.
Without tears, how will we ever learn and grow? Like the old saying goes, “It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” As painful as breakups are, they are times when we learn the most about ourselves; like gold under fire, the pain is meant to purify and make stronger. As tough as breakups are, as big or small of tears that are left, they are a part of life that we must learn and grow from.
