The day my heart shattered
Sometimes broke just isn't strong enough.
To know where you're going…
You have to know where you’ve been. Or at least that’s what they say right? I’m not sure any of the conventional wisdom applies when it comes to grief and healing from a broken heart, but I do know we can’t talk about the Evolution of a Broken Heart without starting with well… a broken heart.
I remember so clearly the day my heart shattered—as if I could forget the most painful moment of my life so far. I remember every crack leading up to it. Like a window slowing cracking over time, a crack here, a crack there, until finally, one blow sends the whole thing flying into a million tiny shards of glass.
That’s what it felt like. And that final blow was brutal, a one-two punch I thought I’d never recover from. I can close my eyes now and watch the scenes play out like no time at all has passed. I watch as I call my best friend and break down on the phone. Watch as I pull myself together and cook my family dinner. Watch as I push my food around on my plate and hold it together just long enough to put my kids to bed. Watch as I follow my then-husband outside and shakily tell him I want a divorce. Watch as the color drains from his face as I tell him everything I know. Watch as I fire question after question at him, he doesn’t have answers for any of them. Watch as he stands there and stares without saying a word as I sob on our bedroom floor and shatter into a million pieces. Watch as I realize I had never printed the family pictures we had taken months early and choke on another sob. Watch as I try and fail to sleep that night, an endless trail of tears running down my cheeks and thoughts I don’t know what to do with racing through my head.
If I let it replay long enough, I can feel that pain again. The tears start to build and the knot in my stomach starts to come back. It’s been nearly 500 days since that day and there are times when it feels like yesterday.
If it was even possible my heart broke even more over the next several days as I realized, as it became painfully clear, he wasn’t going to fight for me. He wasn’t going to try. He wasn’t even interested in trying. After I’d fought so hard, and for so long, and given up so much of myself for our relationship, that was brutal. It didn’t just feel like my heart was broken, it felt like I was broken, smashed to pieces, and beyond repair.
If I was being honest with myself, I knew our relationship was over well before that day and I thought I was ready for it to end. I thought I was ready to say I was done and walk away, but nothing could’ve prepared me for the pain I felt that day and in the days and weeks to come.
Nothing could’ve prepared me for the pain, physical and emotional, of a broken heart.
This post is part of Evolution of a Broken Heart, a section of Sex, Love, & the Naked Truth. Thank you for being here and joining me on this journey.