"Forward, I pray, since we have come so far"
Dear Petruchio,
My friend sent me a picture of a kitten today. He's cute. His name is Melvis and he is purebred and he costs something like $450.
"He was born on August 3rd, my birthday!" she texted me today.
I know she's thinking it must be fate. She needs this cat.
"I need something to love and care for," she texted me, somewhat desperately, after her boyfriend, broke up with her. Broke up with her the week of her birthday and a day or so after her cousin shot himself in the head. BAD TIMING? Ya think?
Of course, he hadn't intended on breaking up with her, while in the throes of passion, a week before that, nor while she was bringing him lunch or doing sweet, "girl-friendly" things that women just love to do. Nor, for that matter, had he even intended on breaking up with her that very day.... it just kinda spilled out.
So, this morning my friend calls me and tells me she went to the ER last night, with chest pains. She says the Doc told her she had Broken Heart Syndrome. Which by the way, is a real condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, which is a temporary heart condition when stress or grief causes pain and paralysis of part of the heart (something like that.) She's on beta blockers for it.
So, you ask, what's wrong with her?
Really? I ask: what's wrong with him? And what's wrong with anyone of you who asked "what's wrong with her?" What's wrong with a woman who loves so much her heart feels like it's literally breaking when her love tells her it's over? The real question is: what's wrong with our society that we characterize people as CRAZY when they go through heart break. Crazy if they hang on, act erratic or can't let go of someone they've learned to love. We wonder, "what's wrong with them?"
There's nothing wrong with them. It's because there's something right with them -- with their hearts. Because a heart is meant to love. To be open. To feel wounded and to love anyway. Lemme make it clear: there's something wrong with the world. We're no longer tethered to a real world, we live in an artificial one, most of us. We turn more and more to machines to tell us things about our bodies, our souls: like when to wake up, when to sleep, how far to walk, or when to stop snacking- like this bra that tells you when to stop eating. We even fall in love online, or through texting. Sheesh. We're becoming machines. It's the next phase of evolution and it has awful consequences for the human heart.
We've forgotten about our instincts. We "power through" things, like machines. We "suck it up," like plumbing hoses. We "start over," as though we were washing machines that didn't get the first load right or clean. If we can't do a relationship neatly and nicely, there must be something particularly WRONG with us.
So, people tell us, there's something wrong, and maybe we should take a pill for it. So some of us do. We take a pill to be happy. To forget. We lose ourselves in something or someone else. We don't grieve. We don't cry. We curse and we die a little inside, yes, from the heartbreak, but also from the fact that the whole world seems to be telling us it's not right to hurt that much.
Or, we move on, find someone else to "be with", as quickly as possible. We forget what our heart feels. We buy the books and believe the lies that dating is a game and love is like a pair of shoes, something you can take off and on when you feel like it. And that it's okay when you fall in love and it doesn't last because there's always another pair of shoes around the corner.
I don't buy it. Because, like my friend, who was diagnosed with a broken heart, I really liked that last pair of shoes too. They seemed to fit so perfectly when I wore them. But sure, I'll throw 'em away, because everyone is telling me that love is, after all, expendable.
