The Beautiful Tragedy of a Broken Heart

What happens when the person you place all of your trust and love in breaks your heart? How do you pick up the pieces and try to mend yourself? How do you look this person in the eyes and accept their apology when you feel completely broken? How do you allow them in again, to try and mend your heart back with you? Is it even possible to do such a thing?

I built my home inside someone else’s heart—and that was a mistake. Because when we build our homes in someone else’s heart, we create stories about them, we mold them into what we want to see, and we don’t allow them to be themselves. We overlook their flaws and think that we can fix them, when in reality, we shouldn’t even be trying to fix them. What we should be doing is building our homes in our own hearts. Because at the end of the day, the only flaws we should ever try to fix, the only lives we should ever try to mold, are our own.

I’ve had my heart broken many times in my life. Each time, I believe that this is the one that will never heal. I think that there is no way I will ever recover from this one—that the pieces are too small, too scattered, too fragile and there is no way that I can put them back together. I believe the key to mending a broken heart is to allow yourself to feel everything that comes with it. I don’t mean to wallow in it, but I mean to really sit with the uncomfortable feelings, the ones that we want to just skim over. Those are the ones that we have to dive deep into. When we allow ourselves to feel our emotions, we begin to heal them.

I remember my therapist once telling me about Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with gold metal dust. The idea is that instead of disguising the flaw and pretending it never happened, it treats the breakage and repair as part of its history. By filling the cracks with gold metal dust, the pottery becomes even more beautiful. It doesn’t ignore the fact that it has been broken, but instead emphasizes the fact that it can be mended beautifully. Just like our hearts, provided we allow the process of the mending to happen.

As I sit here, contemplating, writing, healing, I can’t help but see the beautiful tragedy of my broken heart. As uncomfortable as it feels, and as much as a part of me doesn’t want to, I choose forgiveness. I choose growth. I choose mending and healing the relationship with my broken heart. Forgiveness is a choice that I make for myself, I refuse to carry the burden of non-forgiveness in my heart. And maybe, just maybe, all the pieces of this broken heart will mend, and I’ll once again find growth in this experience.