Healing a broken heart

[Image credit: fotographic 1980]

Time can heal a broken heart
but it can also break a waiting heart.
~ Unknown

The box thing (see Outside of the box) isn’t working so well. It’s just not in my nature to compartmentalize my feelings. In fact, I wear pretty much all my emotions on my sleeve. And now I’m nursing a broken heart. I’ve known heartache over the years, but never at this magnitude. While I wait for time to heal it, it continues to break as it waits — for healing, for dreams to come true, for promises to be kept. For time to pass. In any case, time has slowed to a crawl for this grieving heart. “They” purport that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But what about the part of you that dies as you keep on living? The part no one can see? I wish there was an easy fix, but apparently time is in no hurry and the journey isn’t over.

Has time healed or broken your heart?

Outside of the box

[Image credit: satit_srihin]

One of my male friends explained to me that guys are better able to compartmentalize their feelings than women are. Apparently they possess the ability to stuff emotions into imaginary boxes and either ignore, or remove them at will. Females, on the other hand, are equipped with a million wires carrying—non-stop—every thought and feeling they’ve ever had. With all I’m currently dealing with, I figured I’d try the box thing. Yes, I know I’m a girl. But if I don’t “shut down,” I end up dwelling on circumstances I cannot change, oftentimes worrying needlessly or jumping to wrong conclusions. Or just thinking too much. Living “outside of the box” allows me to better focus on what I do have control over without getting my wires crossed. And when I need to examine my feelings, I simply repack the appropriate box afterwards. Someday I hope to purge a box or two. But until then, this is my new normal.

How do you keep feelings from becoming distractions?

Masking the heartache

[Image credit: scottchan]

Wear a mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.
The debt we pay to human guile, with torn and broken hearts,
we smile … ~ Paul Laurence Dunbar

You know who you are.  The one who dons a mask to hide the pain.  Your countenance contains no clue to the misery locked behind the walls of your heart.  To the outsider looking in, your life is good.  Productivity equates to happiness and when someone inquires of your well-being, your natural response is “fine,” of course.  But fine, in your book, means breathing.  Able to function.  Equipped with skills at compartmentalizing betrayal, disappointment and shattered dreams … without self-combusting.  You believe if you pretend long enough, the difference between reality and fantasy will blur, making it impossible to discern.  So you smile and attempt to fool those who know you best.  Because if you succeed, the lies have a greater chance at becoming truth and no one will be the wiser.  Especially you.

Do you hide a broken heart behind a mask of lies?