Dear Heartbreak Read online

  Try this. Next time you look at yourself in the mirror, try not to see what you don’t like. What’s the point? You already know what you don’t like about your appearance, anyway. Your teeth aren’t straight enough, or you’ve got too many zits, or your bangs don’t hang right, or one eye is just a little bit smaller than the other, or whatever. Blah blah blabbity blah. Forget all that shit that doesn’t matter. Look at yourself the way you’d look at someone else when you fall in love with them. Instead of seeing someone else’s soul, try to see your own for a change. Can you see it? Does it make you want to cry, to scream, to laugh? Does it make you fall in love with yourself? I hope it does, Dragon Queen.

  I suppose it goes without saying that all of this is just my own unique perspective, right? Just the way I see it from my own impenetrable tower …

  ABOUT THE HOLES IN YOUR HEART:

  Heather:

  Remember how I said that there’s a hole in your heart? Well, there is. Don’t worry; we all have them. The hole was in your heart before you fell for your boyfriend, and it will get smaller or bigger over the course of your life—its size, its whole existence, is up to you. If you work very hard on loving yourself, that hole may disappear entirely. The problem is, most people are pretty crap at loving themselves, and so they find other things they think will fill the hole: a boyfriend or dad, their job, school, trips to Target, awards, TV, whiskey. Spoiler alert: None of these things will do the trick.

  These holes begin forming when we’re really, really young. You didn’t mention your home situation, Dragon Queen, but I’m guessing it might not be totally perfect. If it is, YAY! If not, then welcome to the club. Most of the human race are members.

  My parents separated when I was three and divorced not too long after that. By the time I’d graduated from high school, I’d only seen my dad a handful of times in my life. The lack of a dad ripped a pretty big hole in my heart. It made me feel unloved. Like I wasn’t worth sticking around for. My mom later marrying a dude my best friends and I took to calling Satan Incarnate made that hole bigger. By the time my abusive boyfriend came around, I was desperate for someone to come in and plug that shit up. And for a while, it seemed like he had. He was sweet and romantic—all the swoony things. And then he wasn’t. The hole got bigger. Our parents, or the struggles we have feeling invisible out in the big wide world, or all the things society tells us we should be, but aren’t: These are the things that dig holes in our heart.

  Most people spend their whole lives trying to fill the empty places inside them. They think buying something or loving someone or going somewhere or doing some cool thing will fill those abysses. Sometimes it seems like they do, at least for a little while. And then, bit by bit, or sometimes in a whole flood, those spaces will open back up and it’s like you have ten empty swimming pools in your chest and your gut. You’ll know this is happening when you feel all the things you mentioned in your letter: messed up and dependent and anxious. You’ll feel vulnerable, too, but vulnerable is good—it says you’re still in the game, you’ve still got something to lose. When you’re vulnerable, you become a truth teller, and that’s as awesome as a badass ninja warrior.

  We feel all those thorny things inside us when we’re looking outside ourselves for confirmation of our worth. People loving us—or saying they love us—is usually how we determine if we’re okay. We reason that if our boyfriends or parents or friends love us, then we are worthy of love, and thus we have value. But what if they stop loving us? Or they never loved us to begin with? Or they are so caught up in their own problems that they don’t know how to love other people? And don’t forget: The people you’re hoping will fill you up have holes that need filling, too. And maybe they can help fill some of yours and you can help fill some of theirs, but that’s not always the case, is it? My dad left—no love to fill that hole. Bad boyfriend? The hole gets bigger. Friends betray you? Goodbye, self-worth. You see where I’m going with this? The kind of unshakable love you need, the love that will be yours no matter what, can’t come from other people. It starts with you. It ends with you. Anything in between—finding your true love, having a mom that rocks, knowing you have a girl squad you can depend on—this is all gravy.

  I know, I’m sorry. But that’s the shitty, grown-up truth. It might sound cynical, all lone-wolf I-don’t-need-anybody, but that’s not what I mean. Of course we want to love other people and love them well. We want strong relationships and we want to be loved—and we are deserving of love. Love from other people is good! Yay, love! But you won’t even be able to enjoy or truly accept that love until you know you’re worthy of it. And you won’t know you’re worthy unless you love yourself (remember how Zach said how freaking awesome you are because no one like you has ever existed in the entire cosmos?). Bonus: When you aren’t expecting the people around you to carry shovels to fill the hole in your heart with their love and attention and praise, then you let the people you love off the hook. They don’t have the enormous responsibility of holding your entire sense of worth in their hands. This is what we call a win-win situation.

  Besides, Dragon Queen, you don’t need anyone to tell you that you’re kick-ass. You are kick-ass. You always have been. I want you to make a list of all the reasons you’re awesome. Then read that list every morning. Add to it as your awesomeness increases. This knowledge that you are enough just as you are is what fills that hole. Our absent dads or dismissive mothers or traitorous best friends or boyfriends with clenched fists are the ones digging the holes. We’re the ones that fill them back up. Here’s some more homework: Listen to “Because” by the Beatles. This song came to mind while I’ve been sitting with your letter because it’s a song with a heart as big as yours. Love is all, love is you. It’s all you, Dragon Queen.

  Zach:

  Oh, the hole in the heart—how it aches in its emptiness! How the wind whistles through it like a lonely desert canyon! How it palpitates like an exposed nerve, pulpy and quivering and raw! Yes, Heather is right (she’s pretty much right about everything—don’t tell her I said that or she’ll get a big head and my life will be unbearable): The hole most definitely exists. It’s part of being a person. It comes with the territory. You might even say it’s our defining characteristic. We are the-creatures-with-holes-in-their-hearts. Buddha, in his no-bullshit-allowed way, just cut to the chase and made it the first of his Four Noble Truths: Life is suffering. (If that sounds way harsh, it’s worth knowing that other English interpretations soften the blow a bit. “There is suffering in life,” and “Life is unsatisfactory,” are possible alternative readings.) No matter how you phrase it, though, it’s still important enough that Buddha made it the starting point for everything else he wanted to teach. It’s like he said, “Okay, life hurts. Something is always not quite right about it, nagging at you like a pebble in your shoe. There’s no way around that. Can we just agree this is true and move forward? Great. So then…”

  What to do about it—ah, that’s the question. We can start by recognizing that the hole is there. That’s a big first step. Tons of people just pretend that they don’t notice its nagging, gnawing pulse. They push it away in all the ways Heather mentioned—and by quite a few other creative methods, as well. The most common is probably by throwing themselves at another person, hoping someone else has the missing piece that fits just right. They don’t. Nobody has that for anyone else.

  There’s a movie from the ’90s called Jerry McGuire. It has Tom Cruise in it (don’t get Heather started on Tom if you know what’s good for you—her obsession with the guy is frankly a little spooky). Anyway, Tom’s character is making a classic Big Romantic Speech to his love interest near the end of the film—the kind where our lovelorn hero confesses his true feelings, his pleading eyes glistening with trademark Cruiseian sincerity—and he tells the woman, “You complete me.” Cue the tears and the pounding of hearts from coast to coast. The scene is undeniably romantic. It’s also, not to put too fine a point on it, complete and utter horseshit.
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  Listen, Dragon Queen, I love my wife with everything I’ve got, and I know she loves me the same way. We’re a damn fine team—we work and play and travel and scheme and laugh and couch-potato-out together like nobody’s business. We inspire and challenge each other to be the best versions of ourselves. We’re as compatible and complementary as it’s possible for two people to be. But do we complete each other? Not a chance. And that’s okay. Life is too untidy for that. Remember the first Noble Truth?

  The hole in the heart doesn’t disappear just because you’ve met the right person. Once you can honestly admit you’ve got it, though, you’re ready to begin the important work of figuring out what the dang hole is for. It’s not there for nothing. If you look closely enough, in fact, you’ll see it’s not really a hole at all. If you can step back from trying to fill it every second of your life (maybe by being a good consumer, maybe by settling for partners who don’t respect you…) it reveals itself to be a tunnel—a secret passageway to the heart of your heart. It’s how you let people in, how you can empathize with them. Heather already talked about how important it is to stay vulnerable, and she’s right again (as usual! How annoying!). The hole in your heart can end up being the same opening through which you fall in love with the world.

  There’s a saying Heather and I both love, from one of our favorite TV shows, Friday Night Lights. The characters would say this before they went out to play football, a kind of mantra that got them in the zone. Neither of us are sports people, but this has become a phrase that fires us up. We hope, Dragon Queen, that it will fire you up, too.

  Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can’t lose.

  Love,

  Only skin, muscle, and bone separate my heart from [his] heart. I am so close to him that I can feel it beating against my own chest.

  —American Street, Ibi Zoboi

  Dear Heartbreak,

  I don’t believe we’ve met before. I’m—well, if I tell you who I am you might be able to find me, which I’d like to avoid for now. I’m writing to you because, while I’d like to put off our inevitable meeting for as long as possible, I’m a little upset that we haven’t even had the chance to become acquainted. I’m the type of person who craves love in all its forms—I want to have someone in my life that I can be my authentic self around. I want to find someone who I can sit in silence with, listening to the rain and the sound of our heartbeats. The problem is, that seems like an impossible task.

  Every time I see someone that I want to meet, or want to get to know, my mind puts up a wall. “Why would they want to talk to you?” My brain and heart want love, but my mind puts its overanxious foot down. Someone reaching out to me is a welcome thought that I pray for every time I walk down the street with my earbuds in, but no one ever does. I feel pain, an ache deep down in my heart every time I let someone walk away with nothing but a hopeful smile, or force myself into not sending a text or email to a friend I desperately want more with, because I tell myself I would just be a burden to them.

  Heartbreak, maybe I have met you after all.

  Thanks for listening.

  —Anonymous

  KNOCK DOWN THOSE WALLS

  Dear Anonymous,

  Who placed those bricks around your heart? Did you ask for those walls to be there between that thing beating in your chest and whatever is on the other side of happy? The thing about walls is that you can knock them down. You can punch through them if you’re angry. And if you still want them there, around your heart, you can paint them if you need a change of scenery, or you can hang a painting. You can stare at them all day, but the problem with that is they’ll start to slowly close in on you. Walls can break you, too. They can knock you down. So can love.

  But love is not like a brick wall. It’s more like an ocean wave. Yes, it can knock you down; you can be swept off your feet. But unlike walls, it ebbs and flows. You can swim in it. It can carry you to new heights. But if you have a wall around your heart, the waves of love will only crash along its surface, never reaching the shores of your most beautiful, brilliant self.

  So here is how to knock down the walls around your heart, of which there are plenty.

  Things you will need:

  A heart.

  Warm, gooey feelings.

  Words. Soft words. Sweet words. Gentle words.

  Eyes. Warm eyes. Kind eyes. Deep, all-knowing eyes.

  And hands. Preferably warm, too. And dry.

  Imagine your heart beating behind a series of walls. No one can hear or feel its rhythm. It can’t go out, as they say, to anyone. There’s no heart-to-heart. It can’t even break or ache because of all those walls.

  Now, when you knock down that first wall, the whole universe will open up to you: outer space, the alignment of the planets, the waning and waxing moon, the stars at night, the clouds and sun in the day, and even the thunderstorms. Step outside and pay attention to how all these things move around you, whispering sweet everythings into your ear. The soft summer breeze is a poem. The raindrops are melodies to a love song. Even the harsh winter winds are a shout from the universe telling you that the Love of Your Life is standing at a bus stop shivering, with hands shoved into coat pockets, lips chapped, cheeks red, toes frozen, waiting for you to come and say something, anything.

  So by taking a step toward this cold someone with questioning eyes, you remove another wall. Take a step toward them. Just one is fine.

  It’s okay if you only make eye contact and the words don’t slip from your mouth as easily as you would’ve liked. So you stand there with your own hands in your coat pockets, shivering, lips chapped, cheeks red, and the first snowflake lands on the tip of your nose and you brush it away. So Love of Your Life turns to you with those same questioning eyes, and that half-smile is another nudge from the universe. Smiles belong to the world beyond the clouds, too.

  You look away because those stupid walls keep you from reaching out and touching back with your own smile. But the universe is still a wide, all-knowing place and it sends you another sign. Love of Your Life is not getting on the same bus, after all. These walls that stand between your heart and other people are well-placed and stubborn—you have to make a quick decision: You can either be late for school, or be on time for your fast-beating heart that feels as if it’s about to leap out of your chest. Your heart is beating so fast that your legs don’t move. You’re frozen there, not from the cold, but from those stupid walls. They force you to stay behind as the bus leaves and it’s just you and Love of Your Life on that cold Tuesday morning.

  The most important things needed in knocking down walls around hearts are eyes. You need two sets. One for seeing and one for being seen.

  Do Love of Your Life’s eyes look away? Do they stare back? Are they cast down? Do they smile?

  Does it matter? Because your own eyes glance, then cast down, then look about. Uncertain.

  This is when most people choose to step away from the wall. They let it sit there only seeing the glimmer of sunshine above the top and never moving close enough to feel its warmth.

  The distance, the cold air, the moving cars, the naked trees don’t stare back at you. They laugh at you because everything in that moment is telling you to knock down that wall, and you don’t.

  Out of the corner of your eye, you see that Love of Your Life has moved on to something else: a phone and the world that lives within it. You can look freely now. Boots, pants, coat, hair. But neither of those things makes you want to knock down those walls. It’s the eyes. You need to see the eyes again. And the face that belongs to them. Most importantly, it’s the smile that will send you over the moon and you’ll come crashing down in seconds, hopefully landing on a stupid wall.

  Walls are held up by the unrelenting ground like a forced group project. So you’ll need more than just eyes to pry some of them apart. Words will do the trick. Start with hello. No. Too easy. Too revealing.

  Time is always on your side. So ask Love of Your Life what time it is.

  You
already knew the time. And something about your eyes tells this truth about you. And Love of Your Life picks up on it, so the time doesn’t end there. A brick has been pushed out of its place. There is indeed a hole now, so you peek.

  Love of Your Life’s eyes glance again, taking a quick note of your boots, pants, coat, hair. You hope that everything is in place, as it should be—glowing, shiny, and perfect. You scan your memory for words that aren’t about the time. Place is a good start.

  The town, block, school, grade. You want to know exactly where your heart will roam once that last wall comes tumbling down. You want to know what two points on the infinite map of fate have brought you both here.

  The town is not so far. The block is even closer. The school is yours. The grade is the one above yours. There are many points of entry here. So the walls fall one by one to reveal the eyes again, and that precious beloved smile.

  But this is all too much. Your heart races because it feels naked, exposed. Anything can happen at this point. Eyes can look away. Words can become rushed, then hushed. You take too long with your own words. Your eyes are the first to look away. You search the snowy ground for broken pieces of concrete from fallen walls. You need to stack them back up.

  I have been here before, many times. I know what this feels like. And it wasn’t always about someone I thought could be the love of my life. This wall is like the first day of school, the big test that I need to take to get into a good high school, or the move into my dorm room for college. It is basically fear. For whatever reason, I’ve always imagined the scary thing behind a wall was a steep cliff, and if I knocked down that wall, I’d fall to my death. Starting over in a new grade is scary, so I think, I will die. That test is hard. I will die. I’m moving out on my own. I will die.