Pieces of a Heart
Grief, kintsugi, and the stories I've been telling myself
I've been picking up the pieces of a heart that’s broken and jotting them down, writing this post in spurts for the last two weeks. I have been saving drafts instead of publishing because it felt disconnected, like if I could just find the missing splinter or shard everything would flow for you. Like it would be art instead of pieces.
Then I thought about kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing something that’s broken by filling the cracks with gold.
So I offer you the pieces. Maybe the gold comes next. Or maybe this is the gold.
I’ve been sad. I am sad.
Two weeks ago, I was mid-rehearsal, struggling through a cold that felt like it was getting worse. When Jimmy Fallon and Meghan Trainor finally entered the set we’d been lighting for days, I snuck off to the bathroom and took a COVID test. It came back definitively positive. I took another, just to be safe, and then I packed up my things and walked off the first job I had been really excited about in a year.
When I got home, my boyfriend came over and snuck my dog out the door to walk out some of his energy while I rested. With a mask on, stringy hair, and the color drained from my face, I watched him leave my apartment for the last time.
We broke up that evening. He had been spinning around whether he was ready for the relationship we were already in and I told him I didn’t want my COVID to stop him from making a decision. I didn’t want to be cared for by someone who was going to leave me afterwards. He told me it wasn’t me, it was him, but my ears were stuffed with my own past and self doubt. Those words are still sitting just out of my reach.
The next afternoon, an ex who cheated on me for the entirety of the four years we dated and played at reconnecting just a few months ago, emailed me a life update from the city he refused to move to when I relocated there for work, excited about new milestones he had wasted my own years to meet, milestones that had already been heavy on my heart.
It was a shitty day.
Much of this has passed for me, though there are still traces of them here. I’ve been COVID negative for a week now, though the mucus just won’t quit. The job I missed is over and I know more jobs will come. The email has been archived as something that is not about me or about the universe, just an update.
But heartbreak carries on still. She’s persistent. She won’t be rushed.
Grief is just love with no place to go. -Jamie Anderson
Being understandable-sad feels different after finally climbing out of a lifelong unexplicable-sad. It feels a little calmer. It feels like giving myself more grace and “letting myself feel my feelings.” The sadness feels pure without the dregs of depression clinging to it. It also feels a little more terrifying. Because what if it stays.
In some ways, everything piling on at the same time as COVID was a gift because I slept through a lot of grief the first week. Sickness required me to hibernate until my next therapy appointment and I am grateful for that.
My therapist welcomed me into my sadness. I'm a huge crier, but I'm also a private crier. I usually shove all but a few tears back into my throat for later, even in therapy. But I cried in this session. It just drained out of me. For minutes instead of seconds. She didn’t say anything. She just saw me. She said she was sorry and surprised and that what was happening was hard. I believed her. I knew I was held.
Then, as a I rambled on, mixing facts with the stories I was telling myself, she said to me,
"You need to come face to face with whatever you’re afraid this all means about you.”
The Drama
In the same session, in the middle of me whispering something about how I am going to be alone forever, I just know it she said "I hope this doesn't offend you, but it's almost theatrical - these stories you're telling yourself, the giant leaps, the forevers you're creating."
And a part of me threw off her mask with a wild grin, ready to be seen.
I've been called dramatic my whole life. I've found it offensive most of the time. It's a word thats been used like a weapon - used to tell me that someone can't handle my sensitivity, used to invalidate my feelings. But I couldn't really tell the difference between a weapon and the truth until now.
I am sensitive and my feelings are valid. That’s true.
But I am also fucking dramatic. I literally have a degree in theatre. We all tell ourselves stories, but I’m a professional. I take things to extremes. I love the dramatic part of me. She helps me write beautiful stories and see the world as the epic and consequential place it is. She’s interesting and has an incredible sense of timing. She’s a romantic - she leaves love letters balanced in trees. She’s entertaining. She’s so funny. She’s brilliant.
But it can also be detrimental when the drama queen runs rampant without anyone to check her, without anyone to collaborate with, without support.
When we caught COVID and heartbreak in the same week, Couch Stephanie climbed into the driver seat and everyone else took their aches and fatigue and body shaking cough and went to bed.
Except dramatic Stephanie. She indulged. She threw herself onto the fainting couch. She got bored in a room all alone while everyone else was resting. She created monsters out of everyone’s sadness. She sat with her own. She had fallen deeply in love and had written the lovers the romance story that they deserved. With nowhere for that love to go and a vanished story, she started to spin.
Our brain came to check in - foggy with no taste or smell, it craved reason at least. (Our brains love stories; they need them to make sense of the world and feel safe.) Unchecked and all alone, Dramatic Stephanie started spinning tales. She built a world out of cardboard boxes, shining lamps through fake windows and draping fabric over the real ones to block out the sun. She performed for an audience of one. She poured over scripts, writing and rewriting. No matter what the story said, she felt better just being able to create one. She took a bow for our brain and then started sliding versions under the other parts doors - her kind of soup. Here's reasons, they will make you feel better. Here's my fears, I'm all alone out here, please help.
And everyone stayed in their rooms even after COVID was gone because the stories hurt. Dramatic Stephanie frantically kept sliding notes under doors, I’m just trying to help, while Couch Stephanie started the third season of Scandal.
All of my parts are hurting. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what the right thing to do is.
“None of us know the right thing to do in some grand sense. But we can do the NEXT right thing. We generally know what that is.” (If my therapist isn’t an ad for therapy, I don’t know what it is.)
I invited my parts out to the table, slid a new note under their doors that just said I’m going to listen. I whispered that the stories they’ve been reading might not be true. Slowly their doors started opening.
The next right thing is to sit together at this table. To say the stories out loud and figure out which are true and which are not.
Some Stories
I was a rebound, never a real potential partner. He’s going to meet someone else and immediately compare me and how awful I am to this new, better person. He’s going to find it easy to be with them, he’s going to introduce them to his kids. He doesn’t care at all that we’ve broken up; he’s relieved, he’s happier now. I am the person people date before they meet their forever person. I am a stepping stone. Everyone else is in happy, healthy relationships. I cannot handle another heartbreak. I just can’t. I don’t want to swipe. I don’t want to talk to strangers. I don’t want to meet someone new. I don’t want to get to know someone new. I don’t want to be convinced that they’re the person for me. I don’t want to do my very best and still be left again. I don’t want to be finally seen and still not chosen. I will be alone forever. There isn’t anyone out there for me. My relationships are doomed. I will never been in a healthy, happy relationship that lasts. I will never have a life partner or a family or my own. I will never be a mother. If I want to be a mother, I should just do it on my own.
And so, I step back and look at what I’m afraid these stories mean about me.
There’s something wrong with me.
Even when I am feeling good and putting good into the universe, it is not enough. The universe and I are misaligned. My good is not enough.
I am not worthy of being loved. I am easy to leave.
I did something wrong.
I should have seen this coming.
I deserve to feel like this.
I am too old. I am behind on life. I am not doing it right.
I am going to keep repeating patterns forever.
If I let myself be sad about this, I will never stop being sad. I will be sucked back into my perpetual puddle. I will start waking up sad in the mornings again for no reason. I’m worried that I don’t know the difference between sad and depressed and my brain will mistake one for the other.
I’m scared that nothing will ever change, that what I do has no consequence.
I’m scared that none of it matters,
I’m scared that I have no control over what happens in my life and so what. is. the. point.
Today it rained all day and I did not have an umbrella or even a hood on my jacket. I didn't hurry. Other than the slight tilt of the head to shade my eyes, I just let it rain on me. And it felt right. It felt like everything outside of me was aligned with inside of me. It wasn't a storm. It wasn't panic. There wasn't a rush or risk. It was just. sad. It was just low. It was quiet. It was just wet shoes and being alone.
The Truth
The stories I’m telling myself are made up. And they made everything feel worse.
The universe is not against me. I opened a door for communication and communication came in through that door. That’s cause and effect.
Sickness happens. Job loss happens. Shitty things happen to good people. Searching for further meaning in those things is a self-deprecating waste of time. And we don’t have time to waste like that.
My relationship was better than any of my recent past - no one cheated on anyone! Woo! I was a good human (flawed) partner. I am not a bad person because we broke up. I can’t know what will happen next, but making up stories about it is just pretend - I can do it if I want, but why do it if it hurts? I do not deserve to feel hurt, I did not do anything wrong - I put my heart in someone’s hands and sometimes when we do that, we get hurt. Whether things work out between two people is about fit and sometimes about timing, it’s not about either person’s worth.
I am not too old. I am not inconsequential. It is not too late. I am not alone now and I will not be alone forever.
And I do have control. I literally wrote all of these stories.
I can rewrite them. I can write better, brighter ones.
What’s Left
I did not let my apartment be quiet for a week because I didn’t want to hear the stories I was telling myself. I did not answer my friends’ calls for a week because I thought I might leak the stories.
Now they’re out.
Without the stories, there’s less panic and less anger and less shame and less life-consuming grief, less dread, less hate, less helplessness. I encourage you to let the stories you’re telling yourself out. Face them. Figure out if they’re true and compassionately let them go if they’re not.
What’s left without the stories is just what is.
I’m still sad. And that’s okay. It’s okay to be sad. About a job loss. About a sickness. About a breakup. Those things are hard. They suck.
Sad is just sad. Over is just over. It doesn't mean you're broken. It doesn't mean you did something wrong. It doesn't mean the universe is against you. Shit is random. And also sometimes logical. Heartbreak happens. Life happens.
What’s happening right now does not say anything about what will happen next.
It just hurts. I don't want it to hurt. I don't want to wish he was around or that I could text him. I don’t want to miss him. But I do.
Sometimes there's nothing to say or do to make it hurt less. I'm trying to conjure up what I would say to my niece if she were me. Or what I'd say to my best friend. And this time I'm not doing it wrong. There's just nothing to fucking say that makes it better.
I wish I could make it go away for you. But I can't. So I'll sit here with you through it. You can text me. I won't stop answering you. You can say the same things over and over. You can just tell me it hurts over and over. And I will hear you every time. You can tell me your stories and the things you are scared of. I will tell you the truth. I will tell you I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you're hurting. You don't deserve to be hurting. You can call me at 2am when you’re typing these words on a screen blurred by tears. I can’t stop it from hurting, but I’ll be right here. You are going to be okay. You are safe. The hurting will not last forever.
Today you can send me the memes you want to send him. You can tell me how wonderful you still think he is. How this is the first time in a long time that your heart feels really broken instead of secretly relieved. You can send me your jokes, your quips, your puzzle solves, your research, the funny thing you heard someone say, your drafts, your love that feels like it has nowhere to go.
Then, maybe tomorrow, we can start writing a new story.
i'm so sorry Stephanie. Glad you are pulling yourself out.
Wow! This really hit home for me, Stephanie! All of the Italcized text under "Some Stories" are recurring thoughts I've had for a long time. Rephrasing them into positives is hard work and sometimes I wonder if I'll be successful, but I keep trying. Thanks for sharing.