Yes, I know there are only four chambers. In our hearts, that is. Our
real hearts that beat behind our rib cages and pump blood and oxygen to all of the places those things need to go in order for us to keep on living. But death has five stages, as does grief, according to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who wrote best-selling books about both, and as I see it, heartbreak has more to do with death and grief than it does the actual heart. We call it "heartbreak" because our emotions are involved, and emotions are associated with the heart, but it's only in a figurative sense. I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know, of course. Big revelation! Broken hearts aren't really broken! The person is just incredibly, unbelievably hurt and sad! But even if having a broken heart doesn't mean that you're walking around with duct tape wrapped around the organ itself, it sure as hell can affect you in physical
and emotional ways. This is what I know so far about the five chambers of heartbreak.
CHAMBER 1: ABJECT SADNESS AND CEASELESS CRYING
When you're in love with someone, and that person tells you that it's over, and he's never going to see or speak to you again, your first reaction is most likely to cry. Except, in a situation like the aforementioned one, the word "cry" doesn't even come close to describing the calvacade of tears, lightning bolt of pain, and the accompanying sense of despair that overtake you as your beloved turns and walks out the door and leaves you all alone to deal with the aftermath of his decision. I don't know how many tears a human being is capable of shedding at any given time, but I
do know that when my man left me almost two weeks ago now, I cried so much that my cheeks started to feel sore to the touch and my eyes looked like slits underneath my swollen eyelids. And still the tears refused to stop coming. There were occasional intervals, but even the mere thought of what had just happened was enough to trigger a fresh round of waterworks. The worst part was that no matter how much I cried, it didn't make me feel any better. Crying is supposed to be cathartic. That may be true in some cases, but not in the case of full-blown, mind-numbing heartbreak. For two days straight, I was either crying or trying not to cry, but no matter which mode I was in, the sadness and pain levels were the same. The shedding of tears did subside somewhat on the third day, but it didn't stop completely, and almost two weeks later, I'm still prone to crying jags that come out of nowhere and can last for periods of up to half an hour or more. The sense of loss and despair are so great that I can't think of anything, look at anything, or listen to anything without being reminded of the man I loved, the fact that he's gone, and the horrible emptiness that he has left in his wake. I've been told that it won't hurt like this forever. That the tears will eventually dry up and the sun will shine down on me once again. But "eventually" is a pretty vague designation as far as time is concerned, and even the most brilliant, warming ray of sunshine couldn't penetrate the dark pit of desolation that swallowed me whole on the day he left and seems determined to keep me here indefinitely.
CHAMBER 2. SENSE OF REJECTION
The sense of rejection you feel after the person you love ends the relationship, for whatever reason, comes parallel with the tears, but based on my one previous experience with heartbreak (i.e. the end of my twenty-five year marriage), it lasts much longer. In fact, to be completely honest, I
still feel rejected by my ex-husband. To have been dumped by a man with whom you've had children and who was the focal point of your existence for a quarter of a century (even if he
did refuse to have sex with you for the last five years of the marriage because he thought you were fat) is bound to make you feel like a dishrag that's been wrung out, tossed into the trash, and left to dry out and harden next to all of the frozen food wrappers and uneaten dog food. And then, when the man who helped you reclaim your sense of self-esteem turns around and does the same thing to you, albeit after a much shorter amount of time, it hits you like a stunning, merciless blow that takes your breath away and leaves a lingering sensation in your throat that makes it hard to eat, talk, or even swallow your own saliva. Getting dumped is a wretched experience in any case, but when you've been dumped because the man you love has decided he would rather be with another woman than with you, it's almost impossible to envision a time when you will ever feel desirable or loved or wanted by anyone again. Friends and acquaintances can spout all of the annoying platitudes they can come up with ("Oh, you'll find someone else", or "Let her have him", and "he's not worth crying over"), but platitudes and well wishes are no match for the pain of knowing that he had a choice between two women, and the woman he chose was not you.
CHAMBER 3: ANGER
Like the sense of rejection you can't help feeling, anger co-exists with the tears, but it comes and goes at intervals, which not only makes you even more of a basket case, but causes the people around you to worry that you might go off and do something crazy to get back at the man who hurt you. Even in the midst of all those tears of sadness on the day he left, I felt enough occasional bursts of anger to say things like "He's not going to get away with this!" and "I hope he doesn't think I'm going to just
take this!" If I hadn't been so paralyzed by pain and grief, I might have actually put my words into action. I might not go so far as to sneak into his house while he and his family are out and boil their pet rabbit to death on the stove and leave it there for them to find, but I
did...and still
am...entertaining random fantasies of confronting him in public places and demanding an account of his sniveling manhood in front of people who would be shocked to learn of our relationship. And even though my status as "the other woman" who has been rejected because he decided to return to his wife would probably curtail any spontaneous outpouring of sympathy on the part of his friends and family members, I like to think that they would at least find themselves moderately disgusted by the callous manner in which he treated my heart. "You pursued
me!" I imagine myself yelling at him. "I hid in the bathroom and wouldn't answer the door for weeks, but you kept coming to see me, and the only reason I finally allowed myself to become involved with you was that you told me how unhappy and unfufilled you were at home! I felt sorry for you, but I ended up falling in love, and now you're avoiding me like a goddamned disease!" No, anger is not pretty. And giving into it could, quite possibly, end with someone calling the police, but feeling it, even in isolated spurts, is better than feeling
only sadness and despair.
CHAMBER 4: REGRET
This one seems to get all bunged up with the first three chambers, and from my present point of view, it looks to be a lifelong proposition. The best you can probably hope for is that the regret you feel over all those things you never had a chance to do before the relationship ended will lessen as it gets buried beneath the crush of all the other regrets that are sure to come your way in the future. Regrets are stupid things, of course. You wanted to do something, you didn't do it, so you sit there regretting that fact. But when it comes to relationships, the regret you feel over the things you never had a chance to do take on an acuteness that makes them almost as painful as the memories of the things you actually
did. The trip he promised to take you on, that you were looking forward to, but which will never happen because he broke up with you and now not only has no intention of carrying through with your carefully laid plans, but has made himself unavailable for a rain date. That garden he was going to help you start, that was
his idea, and the absence of which will now haunt you as fervently as it would have if he'd actually stuck around to wield a spade. That off-the-cuff promise he made to "make it up to you sometime" after some other thing you planned fell through and you were sad and he felt bad about disappointing you. But now he'll never make it up to you because he's gone, and the only bright spot is that his departure has left you ten times more depressed than anything else he did or didn't do, and so the pain that comes from that at least helps to keep the sadness from your regrets at bay. But they still manage to work their way into your thoughts every now and then. And they probably always will. In one of her most famous songs, Edith Piaf sings, "
Non, Je ne regrette rien!"..."I regret nothing!"...and sounds as though she means it. I wish I could see it from her point of view. Because the worst thing about having regrets is that, even though you know it's pointless to wallow in them, they'll always be there, no matter what Edith Piaf tells you.
CHAMBER 5: ACCEPTANCE/MOVING ON
I don't know this one yet. I'm still too sad, too angry, and feeling too rejected to even think about accepting what he did to me and how little it seems to bother him. On the other hand, I have no problem admitting that I made a conscious decision to become involved with him and for that reason must take some of the responsibility for the situation in which I now find myself. What I can't imagine
ever being able to accept is the fact that I gave up so much of myself to someone who not only did not deserve even a tiny portion of what I gave him, but made it clear from the outset that he was a liar and a philanderer who had been with five other women before me and felt no qualms whatsoever about admitting it. That was the reason I resisted him for so long. It was for the same reason that I never felt totally secure even after he told me he was in love with me, promised that he would never leave me, and assured me that our relationship was "different." Sure, it was different. I wasn't just in it for the sex. I
loved him. And even though I'll never be able to prove it, if an applicable situation had arisen at any point during the course of our two years together, I would have taken a bullet for him without a second thought. Maybe that says more about my sense of self-worth than it does about the amount of love I felt for him. I can't be sure. But I am sure as hell about one thing: if accepting what happened is the key to moving past the pain enveloping me right now, I want to accept it, accept it again, and then accept it some more. But I haven't reached the point where I'm anywhere close to doing that. He lied to me, he used me, he hurt me, and when he was forced to choose between throwing me into the abyss of despair and maintaining a solid grip on his own comfort zone, he discarded me like an old pair of shoes without even going through the pretense of agonizing over the choice. Call me stubborn, but that's pretty damned hard to accept. There
is one thing I can accept, though. And it's an acceptance that comes without any real effort at all. For all the pain and heartache that has rained down on me since he broke things off almost two weeks ago, I can totally, absolutely, and completely accept the fact that the man I loved for two years and for whom there was nothing I would not have done in order to make him happy never really existed outside of my head. The man I loved and who I believed loved me was a figment of my imagination. The man who broke my heart so coldly and unceremoniously to concentrate on saving his own skin...
that man is real. And I accept that fact. If nothing else...as much as it still hurts...I accept that one horrible truth.
The Heartbreaker Special. Served cold with hard roll,
wilted garden salad, side of crushed artichoke hearts,
and complimentary slice of Devil's Food Cake. Eat at
your own risk. No refunds. Management cannot be held
responsible for any adverse reactions. In the event of
illness or death, please exit the dining area and
seek help from a physician. Do not complain directly
to the chef. He has better things to do than listen
to you prattle on about your physical discomfort.
We thank you for your patronage. Enjoy!
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