How to Heal from a Broken Heart

I hesitated on writing this post for a long time, because despite all the other stuff I’m willing to share on the internet with you all, this felt too personal and too vulnerable. But, one of my main motivators for having this page is to make people feel a little less alone and I know that this is something that almost everyone has experienced. So, I decided to drag this post out of my drafts and fix it up so I could help someone out there heal. Unfortunately, you can’t go to CVS and buy something off the shelf to fix a broken heart. There’s not a one-size fits all remedy that works for everyone. Everybody processes heartbreak differently and it doesn’t mean that one person’s method is better than another’s. Arguably, it’s similar to grief in that way, amongst many others.

If you’re reading this fresh out of a serious relationship, chances are you’re not going to believe a word I say. I know that when my friends were trying to remind me that I would be okay, I didn’t believe them at all. Of course, deep down I knew that they were right, but rarely do you want actual advice when you’re handling a heartbreak. You want your friends to tell you that he was terrible and that you deserve so much more, or…better yet…you want them to say “I’m sure he will come back to you!”

[Spoiler alert: If someone is willing to let you go in the first place, there is no reason for you to let them back into your life.]

But as it is with most things in life, you probably don’t want to hear the stuff that you need to hear, which is what I’m about to tell you.

I have been fortunate enough to only suffer from one true heartbreak. Everyone tells you that the first time you get your heartbroken is the worst, and it’s easy to believe them, but seeing as I’ve only had one, I can’t speak to that. What I will tell you is that your first heartbreak is going to knock you down like no other. It’s as painful as can be and it’s confusing. It’s the kind of hurt that can feel physically in your body, it keeps you up at night, and it comes along with you when you’re finally able to drag yourself out of bed.

It lingers for a long time. I think that some people will remember that ache of lost love forever. When you lose someone that you really loved, their presence is not one that can easily be forgotten or strewn aside. It stays with you, because it becomes intertwined with you. In order to heal yourself from a broken heart, first and foremost you have to remember who you are without that person. Easier said than done, of course. It’s not uncommon for people to want to rush right back into a new relationship when they lose an old one in an attempt to fill the gap where someone else once stood beside you. But that doesn’t give you any time to patch up the wounds that were left open when you removed that other person from yourself. You have to take the metaphorical tweezers and pick all those little habits and the jokes and favorite songs, so they can’t sting you anymore. You need to give yourself time to rebuild and when you need someone to lean on let it be a friend, a therapist, a family member, or literally any body else than a new partner.

In my case, I leaned on my girl friends hard. They were the ones that came in and picked me up off the ground (literally). They got me out of bed and out of the house, they made sure I ate, and that I didn’t text him. The let me cry at the table in front of the waiter when they took me out to lunch and my sweet roommates let me watch The Hangover trilogy on repeat for days because I just wanted to laugh. I have always known that the love you have for your true friends will always be stronger than any sort of romantic love, but the weeks after I got my heartbroken proved that. They were the ones that reminded me that love comes in all shapes and sizes.

Your life will continue to go on after someone stops loving you, and in that time, the universe will reveal to you the people that really do.

So, I went on walks, I listened to podcasts, and I cried…a lot. I reminisced and I mourned. There were really great days in the weeks following my heartbreak and there were horrible ones. I listened to my friends even when I didn’t believe everything they were saying (they ended up being right), and for the first time in years, I experienced what it felt like to do things entirely for yourself. As most people do, I had let love blind me, which, while it is passionate and romantic, can kill a relationship. I had become less of “me” and more of “us,” and when you’re graduating college and starting a new chapter of your life, it’s kind of important for you to be able to know who you are with or without a significant other. I would’ve kept on living as “us,” it didn’t bother me and I was happy, but now I know how to be “me” and I would never have been able to do that if I hadn’t gotten my heartbroken. So I guess in some twisted way, there is a part of me that’s grateful that I got my heart ripped out of my chest and chucked across the country.

But maybe the most important thing that I did, and that I think anybody can do, was going “no contact.” You don’t call them, you don’t text them, you don’t check in on their Facebook (or their friends Facebook…or their cousins…or their parents). You block or mute their social media accounts. You might want to see what they are doing, but you definitely don’t need to and the second you find yourself searching their name you’re going to regret it. Nobody has ever stalked an ex-partner online and felt good afterward, so save yourself the hurt and say goodbye to all opportunities for you to see anything about them. There are going to be moments where you think that you can reach out to them and it will make you feel better, but it won’t. Type it all into a note on your phone or into a journal, and then forget about it.

It took a long time for me to stop typing in my notes app, and then one day I realized I had nothing left I needed to say. I had gotten it all out. I deleted the note and everything in it.

Overcoming the feeling of being entirely and devastatingly heartbroken was a long process. Some days I felt like I had sprinted ahead and I was completely over everything that happened, that I could fall in love again no problem. Other days, I felt like I was still back at the beginning, questioning where everything went wrong. There were days where I was furiously angry that someone had hurt me that bad, and days where I was just as angry at myself for letting myself get hurt. The sadness is expected, but the anger was not, and it lingered just as long as the tears did.

Moral of the story is that one day you will wake up and you will check your phone and you won’t even remember what it was like to see their name on the screen. You will talk to a cute boy at a crowded bar and you’ll feel excitement and not any sort of guilt that you are betraying someone who is no longer privy to your loyalty. That song you guys used to sing to in the car will come while you’re at work, but instead of wanting to curl up into a ball and sob, you just hum along because it doesn’t have the same power over you anymore.

And that’s when you’ll realize that everyone was right and, you are okay again.