Surviving Heartbreak- My Two Cents

A lot of people are a big fan of the concept of "time" when they're giving advice or dishing out words of wisdom.

"Time will heal everything."

"Healing takes time."

"In time, everything will be okay."

"Just give it time."

"Take some time for yourself."

To list some popular ones.

And I don't know about you, but I find it maddening. I know people mean well when they say these things, I know there's truth to it, I know there's not much else that can be said, but I still just want to snap back, "Oh yeah? Well can you googlemap TIME for me and give me the directions so I can get there TODAY, because what sucks more than what I'm going through is the thought of having to sit with it for a period of TIME that is impossible to calculate."

This is all floating in my head right now because I've recently received two emails from readers of my blog who are going through break-ups, and they've read up on past posts of mine regarding love and the end of love, but they're both like, "Your posts have been so helpful, but I'm still in pain. Can you tell me how to get through this? Can you blog more about this?"

What they really want is a formula that will make their pain go away as fast as possible. They want to be okay again, and they want it now. They're searching for it everywhere.

(If I were to shout out now, May all who know such agony say "Aye aye!", the whole world would have one thing in common.)

Reading about how other people have survived their heartbreaks does help. It's one of the things, along with chocolate over-consumption and spontaneously painting your bathroom mint-green, that can bring us back to life. When I was nursing a heartbreak a few years ago, Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat Pray Love" was incredibly helpful. I needed to read a story that reminded me that heartbreak is universal and, perhaps more importantly, so is surviving it. The pain of losing someone is lonely, and it can save us to know that while our pain is our own, we are not alone in feeling it.

I read her book, I ate tons of carbohydrates, I went to yoga, I prayed, I started creating beautiful things, I performed rituals, I cried my guts out- in essence, I actively addressed my pain on a daily basis- and one day, indeed, I was okay again.

Yeah, we're paralyzed for a while. We forget how to laugh. We go through the motions of everyday life robotically. Caring about anything feels like an awful lot of work. We are sad and we want comfort- immediate, cost-what-it-may, good ol' comfort.

But there isn't a formula. There's no magic mantra, no super-powerful yoga pose, no sacred ritual, no fast-pass to the land of Being Okay Again. And it's not just TIME that heals us. WE have to show up for ourselves too.

If we suffer a car accident that cripples us and we're told that a certain amount of physical therapy for a certain amount of time will heal us, most of us will probably show up for physical therapy every day. It'll be painful and frustrating, but we'll do it, because we need our bodies. The "car accidents" that happen to our hearts are harder to work on, because we don't see the results physically manifesting- we don't even see the wounds- and there's not much value placed on taking time off our day to do "heart therapy". We have to be the wounded player and the cheering physician. We have to come up with our own healing routine, and then we have to be the ones to make sure we do it. It's a lot of work, and it's pretty damn lonely.

Here's what I realized one day mid-heart-recovery, when I was feeling particularly defeated by my own pain and in need of a pep-talk: No one was going to knock me out, cut open my chest, and surgically remove my heartache. Trust me, said a voice in my head, if that could be done, there'd be some rich-ass heart-healing doctors around. Even the people who help you- your therapist, your yoga teacher, your meditation buddy, your gay bff, and the girl whose blog you randomly follow *wink wink*- even those people's efforts are not enough on their own. So get out of bed, put some clothes on, and find out what you need to do today to heal your heart.

I did heal. I didn't shove anything under the rug and build on top of it. I was right there with my wound, present for every stitch, giving it what it needed every day- be that a good cry, a walk by the river, a conversation with my plants, a cooking experiment, or a new tattoo- until my darling heart was healed.

It took some icky sticky TIME, yes. But, more importantly, it took commitment and perseverance. I made myself a priority and I showed up for my recovery.

My healed heart, full of space to love again, was the pay-off.

*

Hearts

I have a meditation practice where I send hearts to the parts of my body that I spend a lot of time wishing were different. I sit in stillness, welcoming wisdom and enlightenment, and literally visualize little cartoon-like one-dimensional crayon-red hearts floating around my waist, hips, ass, thighs, and stomach. I picture little tiny ones nuzzling each other inside my cellulite holes and long ones sliding down my stretch-marks as if they were in a water park. I picture a line of them holding hands around my love-handles (oh-so-appropriately-named) and one big warm one right where I wish I had a six-pack. They are always happy, these hearts, all smiles and sending loving "you're perfect" vibes.

If you haven't detected it, I'll tell you- there's a hint of embarrassment in my tone.

See.

I'd rather be telling you all a story that exposes how confident I am and how I love my body and worship the divinity that resides within me and all that.

But that's just not the case.

I grew up in Brazil, I didn't have the kind of mother who told me I was the most beautiful creature in the world, I was bombarded with magazines and pop culture telling me that there was always something about myself I could improve, and I was not given a model's genetic coding. Embedded in my socialized brain is the concept that there is an "ideal body" and that I should strive for it.

I am ashamed that I occupy something as deep as meditation with something as frivolous as body-image issues. But what can I do. If I don't do this, I don't stand a chance against the voice in my head that tells me I'm not good enough.

Here's how it goes: I wake up in the morning, pee, brush my teeth, and then sit in front of my closet with my coffee and try to figure out which outfit will make me feel good that day. The voice starts in, That's a pretty dress but you had pasta last night and you'll look pregnant. Don't even look at those shorts, are you crazy? You can't wear shorts. You'll look like jell-o with feet. If you wear those jeans you have to wear a shirt that's loose around the waist, unless you want someone with a flat tire to mistake your waist for a spare.

The voice is evil. If someone else told me that they had a voice like that in their head, I'd tell them it should be murdered in a public square and that they should pay it no mind. I would kill anyone who talked to someone I care about the way this voice talks to me. And if I were an objective listener hearing how this voice talks to me, I would tell me it's full of shit. At the same time that I'm overpowered by this negative, self-hating voice, I am aware of its absurdity. I am aware that it is not the truth and that it is in my head, and therefore within my control.

But it's always there. And it always sounds so very real. And I can't get rid of it, not completely.

So I balance out its damage and diminish its power with my hearts meditation. I sit with my cute little hearts and I let them love me and tell me I am beautiful and perfect just as I am. I find comfort in knowing that yeah, even though I can create a voice that is so exquisitely cruel to me, I can also create an image that is boundlessly loving towards me.

It doesn't always work. Sometimes I sit around with my hearts and even they look skeptical, as if challenging my ability to love any part of myself that I've attached a negative feeling to. Or I'll just get stuck in how completely ridiculous I feel; being 25 and too intelligent to be so immobilized with a 15-year-old's insecurities, picturing a 5-year-old's drawings of hearts on my body so that I can get through the day without counting every calorie I ingest. Shouldn't I be over this shit by now, I think, when am I going to grow up? (As if "adulthood" is supposed to be free of self-esteem issues and "intelligence" should outwit the desire to be anything other than what we are.)

That's part of the quest for inner peace and balance, I suppose. Self-love is a tall order. I come up with ways to counter negative or limiting habits and, for the most part, they work and I enjoy doing them, but sometimes I just get tired of all the effort it takes to feel good about myself. I used to think, whenever I got sick of working so hard, that I was losing it, until someone offered that I tell myself instead that I am finding it. Even when I can't stand any of it and want to give up and eat a tub of ice-cream and hate myself afterwards because, frankly, it's just easier than picturing cartoon hearts on my ass, I am still on the road, paving my way towards a healthy self-image. The tumbles backwards are still part of moving forward, even though they feel like the exact opposite. Sometimes I have to ungrow to grow. I have to get a little stuck so I can recognize when movement occurs.

I can't force growth, I can only allow it. I can't force my little hearts into being, but they're there for me, when I make space for them.

How lovely.

image from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drawn_love_hearts.svg