"Time will heal everything."
"Healing takes time."
"In time, everything will be okay."
"Just give it time."
"Take some time for yourself."
To list some popular ones.
And I don't know about you, but I find it maddening. I know people mean well when they say these things, I know there's truth to it, I know there's not much else that can be said, but I still just want to snap back, "Oh yeah? Well can you googlemap TIME for me and give me the directions so I can get there TODAY, because what sucks more than what I'm going through is the thought of having to sit with it for a period of TIME that is impossible to calculate."
This is all floating in my head right now because I've recently received two emails from readers of my blog who are going through break-ups, and they've read up on past posts of mine regarding love and the end of love, but they're both like, "Your posts have been so helpful, but I'm still in pain. Can you tell me how to get through this? Can you blog more about this?"
What they really want is a formula that will make their pain go away as fast as possible. They want to be okay again, and they want it now. They're searching for it everywhere.
(If I were to shout out now, May all who know such agony say "Aye aye!", the whole world would have one thing in common.)
Reading about how other people have survived their heartbreaks does help. It's one of the things, along with chocolate over-consumption and spontaneously painting your bathroom mint-green, that can bring us back to life. When I was nursing a heartbreak a few years ago, Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat Pray Love" was incredibly helpful. I needed to read a story that reminded me that heartbreak is universal and, perhaps more importantly, so is surviving it. The pain of losing someone is lonely, and it can save us to know that while our pain is our own, we are not alone in feeling it.
I read her book, I ate tons of carbohydrates, I went to yoga, I prayed, I started creating beautiful things, I performed rituals, I cried my guts out- in essence, I actively addressed my pain on a daily basis- and one day, indeed, I was okay again.
Yeah, we're paralyzed for a while. We forget how to laugh. We go through the motions of everyday life robotically. Caring about anything feels like an awful lot of work. We are sad and we want comfort- immediate, cost-what-it-may, good ol' comfort.
But there isn't a formula. There's no magic mantra, no super-powerful yoga pose, no sacred ritual, no fast-pass to the land of Being Okay Again. And it's not just TIME that heals us. WE have to show up for ourselves too.
If we suffer a car accident that cripples us and we're told that a certain amount of physical therapy for a certain amount of time will heal us, most of us will probably show up for physical therapy every day. It'll be painful and frustrating, but we'll do it, because we need our bodies. The "car accidents" that happen to our hearts are harder to work on, because we don't see the results physically manifesting- we don't even see the wounds- and there's not much value placed on taking time off our day to do "heart therapy". We have to be the wounded player and the cheering physician. We have to come up with our own healing routine, and then we have to be the ones to make sure we do it. It's a lot of work, and it's pretty damn lonely.
Here's what I realized one day mid-heart-recovery, when I was feeling particularly defeated by my own pain and in need of a pep-talk: No one was going to knock me out, cut open my chest, and surgically remove my heartache. Trust me, said a voice in my head, if that could be done, there'd be some rich-ass heart-healing doctors around. Even the people who help you- your therapist, your yoga teacher, your meditation buddy, your gay bff, and the girl whose blog you randomly follow *wink wink*- even those people's efforts are not enough on their own. So get out of bed, put some clothes on, and find out what you need to do today to heal your heart.
I did heal. I didn't shove anything under the rug and build on top of it. I was right there with my wound, present for every stitch, giving it what it needed every day- be that a good cry, a walk by the river, a conversation with my plants, a cooking experiment, or a new tattoo- until my darling heart was healed.
It took some icky sticky TIME, yes. But, more importantly, it took commitment and perseverance. I made myself a priority and I showed up for my recovery.
My healed heart, full of space to love again, was the pay-off.
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