how to not be heartbroken

or how to be heartbroken all the time, but that's okay too

A friend asked a question today about how to not be heartbroken all of the time? When I thought of her question, I realized I had no answer because I am heartbroken all of the time. I am in love with someone who loves me well, and I have everything that I have ever wanted. Still, I move through the world as a heartbroken person. I feel the grief of the loves I’ve lost before, and I anticipate the grief of the loves I will lose someday. I carry this grief with me everywhere. It colors the way I see the world. It shapes the way I interact with others. It makes me who I am, for better or for worse.  

You, see? When a heart has been broken too much, it can never heal back together in just the right way. There will always be fault lines, waiting for seismic activity.

My son leaves for college in a matter of days. Last week, I dropped him off, so that he could spend a couple of days with his father. He was taking all of his Legos to his father’s house for his siblings. His father and I usually avoid making eye contact, but because he had to get out of the car to help carry the boxes, he looked at me and waved. It was fine. We are civil now. Almost friendly sometimes, but still, I felt something when we made eye contact. Repelled. I’m sure he felt it too. It is so hard for me now to see what I ever saw in him. Tangled within that repulsion was a kind of deep sadness that I couldn’t understand.

I said goodbye to my son, told him I loved him, then drove away, and the grief overwhelmed me. My son will never be my baby again. He is a man, and while I love the man he has become, I grieve the child who will always be lost to me now. Parenting is a journey of loss. The child who is with me today will be gone tomorrow, and then every day is a continuation of that pattern. But then, there are the gifts—the new selves to be formed—the new versions of that child who I have yet to greet.

As I drove home, I felt grief, but I also felt overwhelmed by gratitude. There were things I loved about my son’s father. I loved his humor, his intelligence, his insight, and his ability to make people feel seen. My son has all of those qualities. The things that I loved the most about my son’s father are in my son, and my son would not be who he is if he did not have the exact father that he has. For that reason, I feel grateful for having met my son’s father, even though he hurt me more than anyone should hurt another person.

I drove home to my partner—my husband who I would have never met if my divorce hadn’t taken me to that little town in Ohio—and I tried to tell him how I felt—that I felt so sad, but also grateful. I teared up and said, “Reed wouldn’t be who he is, and I wouldn’t have you if I hadn’t met [my ex-husband].” I said, “He hurt me so much, but I’m also grateful for this place that I’ve landed, and I wouldn’t have landed here without him. It’s confusing”

My partner said, “But you would have landed somewhere else.”

He didn’t understand. I don’t want to have landed somewhere else. I like where I am. He teared up then too and said, “I wish you hadn’t had to go through so much to get here.” And ay, there’s the rub, isn’t it?

A couple of nights later, we had dinner with another couple, and the woman told me that she, too, had been in an abusive relationship. She said that she’s so grateful for her husband now, but he can’t understand what it’s like to feel that kind of gratitude because he’s never known what it’s like to feel such despair. She’d put her finger on what had confused me so much.

Grief has a razor’s edge to it, and on one side is heartbreak, but on the other is gratitude. I would never say that everyone finds gratitude on the other side of heartbreak. I can’t say that. And I can be a wallower, so, in general, I have no real interest in making lemons into lemonade. Still, sometimes, the world makes the lemonade for me, and I only know how to appreciate the sweetness when things have been sour for so long.

The truth is, and maybe it’s because I’m a melancholic, but there is nothing my heartbroken self would rather drink than a tall, cold glass of lemonade. It has the perfect balance of sour to sweet. Add a little pinch of salt, and it’s almost perfection.