Dear Heartbreak Read online

  For a long time it will all be bad days—bad days and worse days, and it will feel like the world will be black and white forever. But one day that boy won’t be the first thing you think about when you wake up. And eventually, you’ll have a good day—you won’t even notice at first, but you’ll find yourself laughing with friends or absorbed in a great book, and you’ll look up and realize you’re thinking about him for the first time all day. The next day might be a bad one, but slowly the worse days will stop coming and you’ll graduate from bad days and worse days to good days and bad days, and your world will gradually fill up with color again. When I was a freshman in college I was devastated by my first romantic disappointment. I had real hopes for this relationship, but he dropped out of school and moved back home, over a thousand miles away. Somehow it was worse that I couldn’t even be angry; he’d done nothing I could fault him for, only what was right for him. I remember crying to a friend, “I can’t do this,” and her response has stuck with me for the twenty years since. “What do you mean, ‘You can’t do this’?” she said. “What is it you can’t do? You’re not going to stay in bed forever. You’re not going to shrivel up and die. So you’re already doing ‘it,’ the thing you say you can’t do. You got up today. You went to class. All you have to do is keep doing it.”

  There’s something singular about the way we love when we’re young, before we start worrying about shit like how much money somebody makes or whether they want kids or if our parents get along with them. You say you were naive enough to believe you would marry this boy and you would be together forever. Maybe it was naive, but it was also brave and beautiful. It takes courage to love another person so fearlessly, especially after you’ve learned the hard way how much it fucking hurts to lose someone. It also takes guts to let somebody love you; it’s hard enough to let yourself be seen and known, to own that kind of vulnerability, but to let somebody love you? To accept that love, to acknowledge you’re deserving of it, is bold and radical and much easier said than done.

  The next time you start to fall in love, will you stop yourself to avoid the possibility of getting hurt? Or will you let yourself surrender again, because this time love might last? Will your heart be ruled by hope or fear? I have a sneaking suspicion, dear Fireheart, that you’re going to live up to your name.

  Love,

  In my next life, I’m going to be an ass-kicking ninja warrior queen. And I will hunt shits like you down.

  —Bad Romance, Heather Demetrios

  Dear Heartbreak,

  I fall in love with everyone, and it’s a problem. It’s like I see someone, anyone, and I can see their entire soul, you know? No matter how tired or sad or high they are, I can just kind of tell what kind of a person they are, what their heart looks like. Or part of it, I guess. This is a blessing and a curse because there’s always another part to someone. There’s always something they don’t let seep through their skin. I didn’t realize that not seeing all of someone could get me in trouble until it did.

  There was this guy, and I thought I could see his soul, but it was wearing sunglasses. The kind of sunglasses that street racers wear. When he finally took them off, I could see his soul better, and his could see mine better, too. Everything looks better with a filter on it. He saw my soul and he saw that I was vulnerable and messed up and dependent and anxious all the time, and I didn’t even realize I was being manipulated and taken advantage of until he literally punched me in the stomach.

  I’m better now, more or less. I’m more wary of people’s souls. And I don’t want that to be the case because I know that he’s not all bad, either. Nobody is. So thanks, I guess.

  —The Dragon Queen, 17

  LOVE IS ALL, LOVE IS YOU

  Dear Dragon Queen,

  1.   The ability to still love people after going through the mindfuckery of an abusive relationship is probably the most badass ninja-warrior shit a girl can do. I’d have you on my girl squad any day (who doesn’t want a dragon queen on their squad?).

  2.   Falling in love with everyone isn’t a problem. What is a problem is not falling in love with yourself. More on this later.

  3.   If I were to perform open-heart surgery on you (in this parallel universe, I’m a brilliant surgeon; don’t worry), the first thing I would see in your heart is a hole. It might be no bigger than the size of a quarter. It might be the size of my fist. Since I’m not actually a surgeon, you’re going to have to figure out how big that hole is on your own. And you’re going to have to fill it. Also on your own. More on this later, too.

  To answer your letter, I enlisted the help of my darling husband, Zach, who was there when I had to piece my heart back together after years of bad relationships, hurts at home, and other disasters. I’ve got lots to say to you, but I think it’s really helpful to get a guy’s perspective on matters of the heart, too. Especially a guy who filmed a documentary of my college production of The Vagina Monologues and thus has logged in countless hours hanging out with ladies who talk of nothing but heartbreak, vaginas, and how to take down the patriarchy. He’s not one of those shitty guys whose eyes glaze over when you bare your soul, and he doesn’t get all fidgety and try to change the subject. Also, I’m pretty sure that if he met your ex in a dark alley, he might be willing to set aside his general position of nonviolence. (I have no such position and so would happily kick your ex’s ass, as long as he is a legal adult).

  ON BEING A BADASS NINJA WARRIOR:

  Heather:

  The thing about loving people and seeing their souls and letting them see your soul is that sometimes you fall in love with a motherfucker. Life is unfair like that. I feel your letter so hard, Dragon Queen. I feel it because I was you when I was seventeen. My boyfriend didn’t punch me in the stomach, but he was so manipulative, so verbally abusive, so jealous and controlling that one afternoon when I was home alone, I pulled a kitchen knife off the counter, sat on the floor across from the dishwasher, and had a long think about killing myself. It seemed easier than breaking up with him. Easier than facing the fact that I’d allowed my soul to be shredded to the point that I was willing to let it go. I felt just like you: vulnerable and messed up and dependent and anxious all the time. My boyfriend would spy on me at work, accusing me of flirting with customers, and once brought a baseball bat to one of my rehearsals for the school play, threatening to beat the shit out of a nice boy who had dared to be my friend. He made a point to say at least one scathing thing to me every day, mean little comments aimed at my self-esteem. I wasn’t “deep” enough to understand his poetry, I was a wet blanket—a total drag to be around. I was selfish and slutty and didn’t I know how much I was hurting him by talking to other guys? I was lucky to be with him—no one else, he said, would ever love me as much as he did. You see, I was so hard to love.

  Lies. All of it. But it takes a while to see that.

  Dragon Queen, we are not alone. Did you know that one out of every three teens is affected by teen dating violence? Did you know that there are girls all over the world right now, right this minute, whose boyfriends are beating them up physically, verbally, or emotionally? Some of these girls will go sit down on the floor with a kitchen knife. Some of them will use it. You, me, and every girl who doesn’t use that knife—we’re survivors. I tell you this so that you know that you are not weak. And it is not your fault that you were hurt like that. And also, I really wish I could punch him in the stomach for you. And knee him in the balls.

  You talk about seeing other people’s souls. Well, I see yours all over this letter. It is really goddamn beautiful. And brave. You’ve been through something crazy terrible and yet you’re still open to the idea of love. Of connection. Of giving someone a chance. There are so many people who would close up shop after a relationship like yours. They’d hide behind walls, wearing armor all the time so that no one could see the real them. They’d wear blindfolds so they wouldn’t be tempted into falling in love again. You don’t want that. And that’s why yo
u wrote this letter. You want to keep yourself from building those walls and wearing that armor. That takes a big heart, guts, and a shit-ton of hope, all of which I think you have.

  But you go one step further. Despite everything this boy did to hurt you, you’re able to see that he’s not all bad. I can’t even begin to tell you how enlightened that is, that you can put aside your own pain and all the ugly in someone else and see a flicker of good. This gives me hope. Hope that you will be able to love again. Hope that you’ll know when someone is worthy of the love you give, and that you’ll know that you deserve all the love you receive—and then some.

  But in the meantime, you have this heart that is broken. How do you fix it?

  The answer is simple and so, so hard: Love yourself.

  Zach:

  Hey, Dragon Queen. Zach here. Thanks for writing your amazing letter. I agree with Heather about your badassitude, but I also want to recognize something else: Your radical heart-openness is not only badass, it’s also subversive. There are Powers That Be who want you to shut down your heart, to squash your own sense of wonder at the possibilities of life. The system we live in wants good consumers, and a good consumer isn’t a person who sees someone’s entire soul and falls in love. Good consumers despair of ever finding love, or ever being worthy of it, and then go shopping and buy shit they don’t need to fill the emptiness they are trying so hard not to feel (this is kind of like the “hole in your heart” that Heather mentions). I’m so glad you’re not a good consumer.

  More than that, it takes real empathy to see someone’s soul and fall in love. What you’re really saying is that you can see the beauty in people in spite of their insecurities, their fears, their self-destructiveness, or whatever other creeping things are hiding in the dark corners of themselves. You empathize with them because you can see some of those same things in yourself, too, and you choose to see their beauty in spite of all that. You choose to fall in love with them. What a magnificent choice. It isn’t easy to make that choice. Don’t ever stop falling in love with the world, Dragon Queen. Stay open and let yourself fall in love with everyone: the awkward clerk at the grocery store, the curiously well-dressed woman on the bus, the mail carrier rocking out with his headphones on. People are worth loving. They just are.

  But … being empathetic—staying open to others—doesn’t mean excusing their shitty behavior. I’m a husband now (Heather’s, specifically—good choice on my part, right?), but before that I was just a regular old boyfriend. Heather and I started dating when we were eighteen years old, barely freshmen in college. By the time this book comes out, we’ll have been married for fourteen years. That’s a long time, and we are not the same people we were when we got together. We’ve gone through all kinds of changes and ups and downs, but one thing I’ll say we have consistently done—even when we have disagreed—is treat each other with respect. Sometimes it seems like people talk about respect as though it’s a lofty goal, like mutual respect is a state that only some select relationships eventually achieve while others are just “good enough.” But that’s not true. Respect is the bare minimum. Don’t enter a relationship without it.

  Respect means treating someone like they are valuable in and of themselves. It means not trying to get something out of them, or trying to change them, or being dismissive of them, or belittling their ideas. When you respect someone, you don’t hurt them (I am so sorry this person hurt you, Dragon Queen), and you don’t try to manipulate them—because you’re not treating them as objects for your use. It sucks, but people, especially when they’re young and still figuring themselves out, usually get into relationships for all the wrong reasons. You can fall in love with everyone and still be fiercely stingy about who you give your heart to. Don’t give it to anyone who doesn’t respect you—wait until they’ve removed those street racer sunglasses and you’re sure they’re worth it.

  THE DEAL WITH SELF-LOVE:

  Heather:

  I don’t remember when I started falling in love with practically every boy I encountered, but from the time my mind went all THAT’S A BOY I WANTS IT until I finally found the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, I lived in a state of pure, unadulterated anguish. Like you, I loved them all. Real boys. Fictional boys. Imaginary boys that hung out in my day-dreams. Boys in the supermarket. Boys sitting across a classroom, slouched in their chairs. Boys on roller coasters and surfboards and movie screens.

  There were so many of these mysterious creatures; every time I encountered one, I would cut off a little sliver of my heart (and sometimes hack off a chunk) and proffer it on bended knee. Do you want a piece of my heart? It’s really good, I promise. Is best heart in all of America!

  See, as soon as I started noticing these boys, I started seeing myself in relation to them. My identity became fractured and the value I placed on myself was all wrapped up in how these boys felt about me. Was I pretty enough? Smart enough? Cool enough? How could I get their attention and keep it? What did I need to do; who did I need to be so that they could love, love, love me?

  I did this with girls, too. In fact, my friendships were the most intense romances of my life. Just like with the boys, I would fall head over heels in love with girls I had just met, girls who I wanted to be. They were my kindred spirits, sisters I became soul-bonded to over secrets and gossip and alliances. I lied for them, changed for them, fought for them. I betrayed myself, again and again, in order to stay in their good graces. Please don’t leave me alone with myself.

  I never had a moment when I thought: Why do I only have a good day if a boy laughs at my jokes and a girlfriend tells me I’m her best friend? Why do I only feel good about myself when other people feel good about me? Why am I giving these people the power to decide if I’m okay or not? It took me a really long time to start not giving a fuck. By which I mean, I began to see that it didn’t matter whether I got others’ approval or acceptance or love—I was never happy until I was happy with myself. (Full disclosure: still working on this—self-love is the deep end of figuring out how to human).

  You said that you’re “vulnerable and messed up and dependent and anxious all the time.” I’m guessing that right now you might be having some difficulty seeing all the other parts of you. I bet in addition to being vulnerable and messed up and dependent and anxious that you’re openhearted and wonderfully complex and affectionate and thoughtful. I bet there are girls and boys that secretly watch you. How can they not, Dragon Queen? Someone that has a big enough heart to fall in love with everyone she meets glows.

  Zach:

  There’s something that I hope you remember, Dragon Queen. The universe is 13.7 billion years old. And through the whole history of it—all the birthing and dying of stars, the formation of planets, the evolution of life from single cells to dizzyingly complex life, from the destruction of the dinosaurs to the rise (just seconds ago on a universal timeline) of the funny mammals we call humans—there has never been, and never will be, another you.

  I know that sounds like a stupid cliché, and maybe it is, but most stupid clichés have at least a little bit of truth to them. Just think about that fact for a minute: No one has ever seen the universe through your eyes, and no one ever will. You’re looking out at the world through the windows of your own secret, impenetrable tower. Every thought, perception, and experience you have is totally unique, because it’s yours and no one else’s. Because of your genes, the family you had or didn’t have, the era and place you grew up in, the friends you had or didn’t have, the people you’ve loved who may or may not have loved you back, your own successes and failures, joys and sorrows, and all the rest of the countless things that make up a person—you have a perspective on the universe that literally no one else does.

  Wow! Does that fact feel frigging amazing to you? It should, because it’s frigging amazing! So what does it mean? Well, think about this. The reason people pay so much for gold, or signed copies of a work of art, or limited-edition sneakers, is because those things
are rare. Rare things are valuable. And if there’s only one being in the entire history of infinity that sees the world through your eyes, then guess what? That makes you infinitely unique and valuable. Gold and sneakers got nothing on you.

  But something tells me you already know this, Dragon Queen. If you’re falling in love with everyone you meet, you already recognize how special they are. You say you’re seeing their souls, but I think what you’re really seeing is their infinite, shining uniqueness. For what it’s worth, I’m going to make a new rule for you: You’re not allowed to see that specialness in others unless you can see it in yourself. Sorry to get all authoritarian on you, but it’s just not logical. How could they be beautiful and special and eternal if you’re not? We’re all on the same level with this whole being human thing we’re involved in. No one is more valuable than you. That’s deep, so I’ll say it again: No one on this entire planet is more valuable than you. (Of course, you have to understand that this cuts both ways. No one is less valuable than you, either. It’s a package deal, I’m afraid.)