Heartbreak

I have had more weddings to attend in the space of the last three years than I have ever had in my adult life. Ironically, they happened in the three years following my divorce. In poor grammatical form, it is hard not say, "what's up with that?" Four of the five weddings were of friends 40 years and older. They are different experiences than the 20 something family weddings I remember as a child. No "Celebration Time" was playing as I cringed and tried to hide my eyes from some distant relative approaching me with his/her arms extended ready to swing my silent, but screaming body out onto the dance floor. They would be coming at me with wide eyes and their head shaking "yes," as eagerly as mine was shaking "no" with a terrified, unwanted smile on my face. It makes me want to take a deep breath just typing that as I pinch myself and remember I am no longer in that banquet hall. These recent weddings have had a very different energy. There is a gravity to them that, unstated, says, "we have had life experiences and we know what this moment really means." I take in the couple who are bravely making this vow, despite and maybe because of all that they know, and I feel in myself a deeper belief in marriage than I have ever had. Whether they stay together or not, I believe that these couples know what they are saying yes to. I believe they have learned about themselves and about what it is to love and be loved in a way that only difficulty or pain, which comes with experience, can teach us. I believe they have known heartbreak and acceptance.

But, this post is not about weddings, or finding the love of our life. It is about anything we set our heart upon and the heartbreak that must come from that. I felt heartbreak in my early twenties when I auditioned for the company that I thought fit me like a glove and was cut. I remember walking in the rain from the studio on 19th Street and Broadway to the subway and a stranger telling me that the tie to my raincoat was trailing on the ground. I was numb with disappointment. I felt heartbreak when I learned my dad had lung cancer. I knew what it meant and was so very angry at what was clearly being taken away from me. In a rare act, I took something and threw it across the room and broke into raging tears. I felt immense heartbreak when I knew my marriage could no longer contain who we had grown into. I have experienced heartbreak in numerous other ways, as we all have. I now understand that to know love, or success, or fulfillment is to also know heartbreak. We must experience them both, though of course, we don't want to. We can read the word heartbreak and think, "yeh, that's a hard time," but when you are in middle of it, it is so much more than "hard." It feels impossible to live through and is as if no one around can understand the depth of our suffering. But, we do live through it. We might fall into despair first, but eventually, we grab onto some strand of light where we start to pull ourselves out of that dark hole. It often comes in some subtle gesture someone makes, or just the right words coming from a friend, or the accumulation of time and distance. As impossible as it seems, eventually, we are back on some path toward something we love. The difference is that something in us is changed and, because of that, the next love we move towards has greater potential to thrive. What heartbreak ultimately continues to teach me is how to love myself, which is the only way to heal the wound. It comes in the form of tenderness, of not blaming, and of not crucifying myself for my own suffering. I know that the next relationship, or dream, or passion I embark on is going to be richer for the heartbreak I have had and for the love of myself I have gained.

Standing in these rooms full of people witnessing a wedding, I am aware of a truth we cannot really know when we are young, the truth that we will always have unmet desires and needs. We will not obtain what we think we need to be eternally happy. This is good news. Really it is. I was never promised that I would get what I wanted, but that I can find ways to love what is here, and in doing that, I get what I need. The Rolling Stones were right-on with those lyrics. To see what I do have and not belittle it because a part of me is still longing is where we learn what love is. Though I continue, at times, to mess this up, I am learning that I can create an opening where I consciously make note of what I do have, while also being curious about what I am longing for. I can work on embracing them both and staying present to these truths. I can sit with what this person (or job, or path) so generously gives me and feel those parts that are full. I can also ask what in me is still crying out for something and create some space for that longing to be there. In defining the missing piece and not doing anything but making room for it, something shifts. A weight gets lifted, or an answer arises clarifying what it needs to be full. When we react too quickly, we never get to see what could emerge. The answer often has more possibility and subtlety than we thought. Most recently, when another heartbreak took its seat in my body, I was reminded that this is a practice that I will never perfect, but is one that I can actively work with. I know that there is nothing greater to do than that -- just keep practicing.