Anatomy of a Broken Heart

Your ribs open and expose a scrapyard. You sink into this shipwreck state and crash like a trainwreck. Remains of long lost memories are all what's left in the carcass that once was your soul. You become vulnerable like a deer in the headlights, you find yourself praying for someone to come back into your life, even if that means a second round of a hurricane destroying everything around and inside you. You dig a grave for your heart but there's no coffin big enough to carry it or to bury it. Life becomes an Amy Winehouse song. You listen to Tom Waits and relate to his drunken laments and his misery. The Smiths play on the radio and you think those lyrics were customized. This mess you're in is not functional, let alone rational. Knees are too bruised from crawling after someone who doesn't give a shit if you're dead, alive, suffering or celebrating. You self-sabotage yourself, questioning everything and wondering if you've been living a lie, or not living at all. It's like taking that Matrix red pill, more like an overdose of red pills.

That's how heartbreak feels like. You can't dance, focus, eat or sleep. Some sort of tormented tunnel vision that blinds you with passion. You obsess over what went wrong, what could have happened been, the what ifs. Everything feels cold and uninviting. Just like an emotional comedown you're trapped in. You delete photos, you try to erase memories by muffling them with alcohol-induced amnesia. Oh, the things you do to feel less. To not feel at all. Brainwashed by your own feelings, you cry on the kitchen floor, you roll your eyes at those happy couples on the bus home, you declare war on dating. Hope is the danger you fear the most and when you wake up it feels like a fuzzy hangover feeling you can never delay. You stuff your stomach with uppers and downers that eventually will numb and distract you from what's going on. The butterflies in your tummy are now rats looking for a way out. You torture yourself and ask yourself how people deal with this. How long will it last? Is it really over? You refuse to listen to your gut but you should know better, you know you must trust your gut in order to avoid disaster. You end up feeling sorry for yourself - why wouldn't you? You're going through Hell after all. You feel like the heartbroken, lovesick, delusional, humilated loser they talk about in your back. And let's face it, you never really learn anything from hearbreak, do you?

Everything tastes insipid. You waste your time cursing the moment that person entered your life, never truly belonging to it but ruining it all for you. You realise you were never special. Somebody else is now where you once were. You're torn between relief and regret, distancing yourself from whatever logical thought that could save your soul in this Purgatory called unrequited love. Your bedroom becomes the Valley of Dolls and you alienate yourself from what used to be you. People will tell you "Don't drink yourself to death. There's plenty of fish in the sea." and "It was for the best. A blessing in disguise, I tell ya!" or "You need to see the bigger picture!" but you are blind and empty inside. There's nothing left, only grief, rage and angsty anguish. All you have left now is time to heal your wounds - you can always brag about the scars later. It's fuckin' survival.