This is heartbreak.

I started this piece two months ago and am now in a totally different headspace, hence why it's unfinished 🙂 Couldn't let it sit in the drafts anymore.

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Heartbreak is a tangible feeling, and people use the word too cavalierly. My heart isn’t broken, it's angry and cold and unrelenting and unreachable and heavy and … feared. By me. I don't like what it has turned into, a lump of coal in the center of my chest, but I can't change it. No amount of flirting or dates or swiping or any sort of external validation brings it warmth. The organ that is the sole thing keeping me alive has crumbled and regenerated into a stone. I've grown to ignore it.

But sometimes, as I'm anticipating sleep, my heartbeat is the only noise in the silence of my bedroom. Its anger, cynically happy to be heard, intensifies and I don't look down in fear of seeing the creature pounding against my skin, daring to crash through my lungs. The fear arises. Beats that feel like drums pound my inner chest and no matter how many deep breaths I take, I cannot shake the taunting rhythmic rattle of my own heart. I lie awake, questioning why it is still so broken, when will it end, waiting for my brain to move onto the next thought, to do anything to distract myself from being in my body. 

It’s strange to have your heart guarded because you can’t do anything about it. They say time heals all wounds except that time seems never ending. Until it ends. And you are falling asleep one night, hesitantly catching your heartbeat's attention to say please, please let this be the moment time ends. And it is. 

Last night, I sought out my heartbeat, usually the other way around. As I dared to allow myself to feel the space between my ribs rise and fall, it was soft. Tender. At peace. The drums were gone. For the first time in many many months, pacificity replaced fear. The rampage was over. What's done is done, no warning or eviction notice needed.

Your heart, healed, becomes soft and welcoming again. Your guard is now retired and knew it was time to grow before you did. Now as this organ sheltered by your ribs softens, so do you. You feel lighter, wittier, and reciprocate smiles from strangers. If you give it enough time, it opens up, the arms that once wielded shields and swords, preventing any further attacks, now grow soft and supple, their muscles relax, callouses heal, and eventually will reach out just far enough to grab another hand. Their swords are now reflective decorations, mirroring warmth, reflecting loving rays of light. 

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I wrote that as I started seeing my now ex-boyfriend. I currently sit in the comfortable awareness of my stone-cold heart. Here we go again.

The rollercoaster of emotions. The circling analyzations of how I'm back here again, seemingly stuck in the claustrophobic atmosphere of my own mind, confined by the unanswered questions. I'm accustomed to the stages of grief but not the whiplash from the brevity of the breakup, the quiet mourning creeping in as the first emotional rollercoaster slows, the depleting wonderment of what could have been. We were at a stop sign that turned into a stoplight, and I was politely asked to leave the car.

Yet, this heartbreak is different. The beats aren't piercing, they don't beg to be noticed or catch my attention as I drift off to sleep. My heart is muted, scared.

I'm no stranger to how these next six months will play out. I've reintroduced myself to the guttural emotion of heartbreak, the helpless sadness that rings the doorbell in the pit of my stomach. It comes and goes as it pleases, I never know when it will arrive so it has its own key.