More Than Merely Sad
I think people, myself included, have a tendency to idealize those we love so that when they sometimes reveal themselves to be just normal people, it can threaten not just our relationships but our understanding of the world. No one is ever, literally, heartbroken, but I think that's meant to allude to a level of devastation in which you can't reconcile what you understand with what happened and that one is unable to move forward because his/her understanding or expectations have been so thoroughly debunked by another person's words or actions. In my case it was coming to the understanding that there really was no relationship at all; I could sit and recount all of the reasons I thought my feelings had been reciporicated, and yet it didn't matter >WHAT< I thought once the other person said I was wrong as far as they were concerned. It's such a disjoin in what I thought was real, that it's hard to simply deal with it like a simple disappointment, dust myself off, and move on, because really it means I have to readjust and operate on a whole new set of rules in order to move forward again. Heartbroken calls for more than perserverance or stoicism, it requires adaptability when the whole point of continuing on seems questionable. The best I can say, if that's the kind of heartbreak someone is feeling, is to ask if that relationship was ever intended to be the sum of your existance. Because if there was ever anything else you wanted to be in life; that's your reason to crawl out of the wreckage for now. Your reason can change later, but only people of very limited imagination really aspire to be nothing more than husbands or wives in life. Put that way, it's easier for me (at least) to see how pain narrows my focus to the point of injury in an all-or-nothing way when, really, I've just put everything else on the back-burner and THAT's the stuff that is going to lead me away from fixating on those things I can't change or even make sense of.
Anyway, even if I'm full of poop, keep talking. You're part of a community here that cares for its own.
