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Who are you? Who am I? | Week 10

March | Love and Relationships | Week 10 | 3/12/2023
Explain what heartbreak feels like

The eloquence and imagination that I can offer to a subject such as this is no match for the generations of songwriters, poets and artists who've labored over its depiction - a labor of love in the most ironic way. I stand atop a bedrock of sorrow and solitude, attempting to add one small stone to the coagulation of experience that forms the collective articulation of heartbreak. I have felt heartbreak, deep in my bones as one does. I have suffered the 'equal and opposite reaction' inherent as a risk of passionate love. I have inhabited the hellish corners of my mind, conjuring up conclusions and rationalizations. I have dipped a toe into that dark ocean of madness present at the shoreline of every heart that breaks. "Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness," Max Ehrmann writes. Heartbreak is a diving board into fatigue and loneliness. 

There is no succinct way to describe heartbreak just as there is no succinct way to describe love. There are however metaphors, useful in conceptualization and necessary for the noetic quality of dialogue on this subject. Love is like life and heartbreak is like death. When you are in love, you feel the vibrancy of life in every breath. The relationship one has with life itself changes, illuminated and elevated by the presence of love. Heartbreak has the exact opposite effect. When you experience true heartbreak, dichotomized by a once-powerful love, you feel the suffering of each moment. Life isn't elevated, it is deflated, it isn't illuminated, it is darkened. With love comes exteroception, on a focal point so beautiful, so enchanting, so captivating, outside yourself. With heartbreak comes interoception, on a focal point akin to the singularity of a black hole, where matter is compressed down to a point, unimaginably dense and dark. 

It is conceivable to occupy the vacuum of time and space emergent with heartbreak for far too long. One can develop Stockholm Syndrome to the desolation, finding a novel comfort in the absence of progress - where the sins of sloth, envy and wrath can rotate their dictatorial grasp over one's consciousness. But to this enemy, war must be raged. Every fiber in your body must rebel against this autophagous tendency. If handled correctly, the bottom of that pit, which heartbreak thrusts one into, can be the launching pad for the greatest ladder ever built - an ascending journey towards betterment, towards success, towards fulfillment, and towards a love even greater than the version one now finds absent in their heart. It can be the most powerful force in a lifetime, the biggest spark of creative inspiration, and the most profound connection to one's own soul. To know true sadness is necessary to gain an appreciation for true bliss. To those that broke my heart, thank you. At the altar of those memories, I offer my genuine appreciation - for the motivation and activation energy necessary for the discovery of courage, the manifestation of my potential, the unveiling of wisdom and the genesis of a new life direction. 

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