Heartbreak is when you go to put ketchup on your cheeseburger at lunch, but someone has accidentally filled the dispenser with sriracha.
At first, your eyes start to water, and your throat constricts. Everything is hot and unexpected. Your breath is hot, your cheeks are hot, your chest, your palms. Everything is on fire.
I’ve only felt heartbreak twice in my life. I suppose that might be an average number for someone of 18; I’m not sure. I haven’t asked around on this particular topic.
I haven’t been cheated on or abandoned by some boyfriend of three years. There’s no love-of-my-life, Prince Charming Bullshit here.
Both times, it was a best friend that broke my heart.
The first time, I went numbly through the rest of my day, waiting to break down crying in the shower. My mom heard me, pulled me wet and shaking from the tub, and held me all night. It’s the only time I’ve ever missed school because I wasn’t sick.
Does heartsick count as a real illness? Probably not.
The break was sharp and precise. A clean break. No cleaning it up. I could pretend the shattered half of my heart was still there, not swept under my lungs, puncturing and bleeding. But there was no going back.
I cried for hours, an ugly jaw-locked sob, unable to speak more than a few words. The pain in my chest and breathing became the only things I could focus on. I wasn’t particularly loud. I made sure of that with the fist in my mouth, suffocating all the sounds that tried to escape.
But there was brokenness. And genuine loss. I felt the strings inside my chest stretch until they snapped. And then there was emptiness. The cold, lonely bareness that comes from betrayal.
That’s the feeling when you stop loving someone.
I still can’t go back and read that email without wanting to cry. But I can’t bring myself to delete it either.
The second time was so much more brutal.
Because I could never stop loving him.
He told me that he was thinking of transferring.
The break was much slower. I realized he wasn’t kidding. I realized he was serious. I tried to be cool. Calm.
I called my roommate, upset at the proposal and looking for someone else to share in my displeasure. But she, as always, was supportive and encouraging of him.
And that was not what I needed.
Of course, we’ll come visit you. When those words crackled through the phone they were like ice picks to the heart. Like he was already gone. They were meant to be encouraging. We’ll always be friends.
But it sounded like a death sentence.
“Are you really crying?” he asked me.
I laughed and nodded. Laughing and crying, unable to stop either. He didn’t want me to cry and I didn’t want to cry.
It was almost 2 in the morning when I left for my graveyard shift at the library, and before I left I knew I had to say something. He thought I was upset because I didn’t want him to leave. And that wasn’t quite true.
“Besides,” he said. “I don’t even know if I’m going to leave.”
“You should leave.” I said. He turned around, eyes wide, jaw loose. “I’m crying because I think you should go. You shouldn’t stay here. Go to a school with a better program. I would never ask you to stay.”
He thought I didn’t mean it. That I was just trying to be supportive. And I do mean it – I am trying to be supportive.
I love him enough to want him to have the best of everything in the world.
Even if it means leaving. Even if it means crying 5 out of 7 days. Every day the break felt new. Slower. Fresher. Even if it means fucking up and almost pushing him away because the idea of him leaving hurt so much.
He thinks he isn’t important. He thinks he isn’t worth crying over. He thinks he’s replaceable. But I could never do that – replace him. He’s my favorite person in the whole goddamn world.
And the idea of him leaving is heartbreaking. Because even though I won’t stop loving him, he’ll still be gone. Things will still be different.
They say if you love something you have to set it free.
