AN ENIGMA OF HEARTBREAK

Ashka Naik

What is it really, that is so devastatingly intense about the bonds that we make and break in this life? What is it about those bonds that set our souls blazing and our hearts racing every time we find someone that fits our desires as accurately as the sunset fits the horizon? What is it that makes us go to lengths to save those bonds - to save ourselves? And what is that inexplicable pain after the end of a “could have been” forever? The loss is the worst kind of heartache, perhaps the most irreparable one. Nothing, absolutely nothing can amount to the fire that losing someone leaves right in the center of your chest - that suffocating, restless catch that feels like a breath that has been locked down far beneath all those layers of strength you have summoned up to keep it from escaping, because you’re scared that if you let it out, you’ll lose control, and you’d rather keep the pain bottled up than let the world know that you’re bleeding inside. Feeling weak is your greatest weakness of all.

But let me tell you, you must bleed if you are to heal. Let those tears flow, because why not? Of course, the loss feels like your world has come to an end, like nothing will ever be okay again, like you’re done, just done with this life. So what, if your body is made of tears, and pain, and anger that burns under your skin when they can’t reach your eyes?

So what, if the ocean raging inside you drowns every lighthouse that ever lit up your shore? The same ocean that devours your insides demands to be set free. So set it frees. Let it rage. The waves will crash and destroy, but soon, they will ebb. They always do. We undermine ourselves as humans with immeasurable hope, It’s probably one of the few things we never seem to run out of. A broken relationship with a family member, a friend, a lover is undoubtedly the worst kind of pain there is - whether it is due to lose, or separation.

Heartbreak is real - as real as the sparks that fly when you are in love, as real as the pain in your tummy when you’ve laughed too loud with your best friends, as real as you. It is a parenthesis, an interval, in your otherwise perfect life, and it may change you, for the better or for the worse. For some, it is the end of their stories, the epilogue. For some, it is a mere prelude to another great saga.

And you know what the irony is? The only thing that can heal heartbreak is love - the love you give to yourself,  the love you give to another, and the love you get in return. So it isn’t the heartbreak that is the enigma at all. It is love - the most enigmatic of them all.

Heartbreak and heartache are possibly the inevitable things that ever existed - the anti- heroes standing between us and our happy endings. We believe in forever - but forever is a relative concept.

Forever, I lived in four hours watching the autumn rain cloud, The evening sky with your hand next to mine might be the forever that someone on the other side of the world lives in forty years, growing old together, watching their grand kids blossom into independent

individuals. The thing is, life is a blend of perpetual nothings and little some things - big things that may never happen, and little things that maybe will. Who knows - maybe the enigma behind us and tracing our heartbreak and the healing after, it is an illusion.

Maybe it is as simple and as complicated as this - we love, and we will love, and nothing is ever going to change that. Not even a broken heart.