what does it mean to have a
broken heart?
I always used to assume that it was
descriptive of that
horrible aching pain that I felt in my chest for almost a year afterwards.
But after the hurt subsided, after the
rough lacerated edges were
numbed by time, I found another interpretation. I came to realise that my heart was still
broken - broken in that it didn't work anymore. Of course it still pumped
freshly oxygenated blood around my body with
mindless efficiency, often
in spite of me, but I am referring to
the supposed romantic function of the heart. That which enables us to
fall and to be in love. I didn't seem to be able to do that anymore.
I went through a
string
of very short relationships because I found that once the
initial novelty wore off ( usually at about the 2 week mark) I felt
nothing. It was like I was
dead inside. I seemed to be incapable of feeling anything other than a mild affection. I remember one evening where despite her best efforts I was sincerely more interested in what was on television than in the girl on the couch beside me.
broken. all broken.
After several years of this
flat numb existence something started to work again. I fell in love once more and
it was only then that I fully appreciated how lonely I had been.
Now though,
the pain in my chest is back - and I can feel that under there somewhere, beneath that ache,
something has broken again. Already I have felt that emptiness,
that numbness, that
sudden ambivalence. Maybe it will fix itself again in time, but maybe it wont. Maybe if it does this time then next time it wont. Surely you can
trash something only so many times before it
breaks for good. Then I will be
empty and numb for the rest of my life.
sometimes I think this would be a
good thing