The Worst Kind Of Pain

Yesterday, whilst picking up around my apartment, I had the TV on in the background. “The Doctors” was on and I heard them talking about how kidney stones were among the most excruciating kinds of pain known to man. With the ability to reduce the bravest men to screaming babies, it’s said that the pain caused by kidney stones can be worse than childbirth.

Well, I’ve never had a baby, but I have had kidney stones for about 20 years. I’ve also survived falling off of a three story building, five automobile accidents where cars have been totaled, gunshot and knife wounds, and a near drowning. And I’ve cracked a couple of teeth and broken five bones in my body.

And yet, through all of the physical trauma and pain, nothing compares to the devastating pain of a broken heart.

Through all of the above-named physical pain, I always knew that I was going to live. To loosely quote a line from the movie “G.I. Jane:”

“Pain is your friend. It lets you know you’re still alive.”

But the pain from a broken heart is different – it makes you feel like you’re going to die.

There are lots of different kinds of heartache. Sometimes, your heart gets slapped around a little. Sometimes, it gets punched. Sometimes, it gets stepped on. But then sometimes, it actually gets broken.

A broken heart can hurt so much you’re constantly on the verge of tears, and every sight, smell, and sound is a trigger. A broken heart makes it hard to go to bed, and it makes it hard to get out of bed. A broken heart makes brushing your teeth, eating, doing laundry, and answering your phone feel utterly pointless. A broken heart is despair, and strips you of your will to live your life.

On facebook this morning, one of my friends shared this:

I’ve had my heart broken six times in my life. It was after the third one that I realized that, though it might feel like your life will never recover, time will eventually dull and ease the pain. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it hurts any less. But I did learn that the future would be okay, even if I couldn’t see it at the moment.

And, so, that’s where I stand today. I don’t know that I can say that I’m going through a full blown heartbreak, but my heart has been stepped on pretty hard with the heavy boot of betrayal – a mitigating factor in the level of pain I’m experiencing at the moment.

Some people say that the more life experience you have, and every time your heart gets broken, scar tissue forms and the callus makes it harder to break in the future.

But I don’t think that’s true.

I think that hearts are easily broken, regardless of age and experience, and the betrayal of love hurts the same whether your 17 or 77. Maybe you hold back falling in love a bit more as you get older, avoiding obvious follies -- but once it happens, your heart is just as fragile and vulnerable as the first time.