heartbreak

By the time we hit our forties, we've all known pain--it's been layered on us like so many coats of paint. Who's to say which heartbreak is the greatest: Losing a child or never having a romantic relationship? Surviving cancer or having a mentally ill son? All painful life events gouge deep furrows and cause emotions to bleed out of us--shock, sorrow, and dismay. Through these tragedies, we are constantly rediscovering ourselves, peeling off the personas we've created to fit in socially and reaching for the unaltered seed of self within us. We'll never completely know our raw core--never completely be able to separate the white of external influences from the yolk of our true selves. But we can ask the questions, keep on with the quest.

I was the last of the four Dresden dolls. Only me... and I didn't want to be here.

Okay.' I can feel the letters vomit off my tongue.O.K.A. Y.I watch the vet insert the syringe into the catheter and inject the second drug. And then the adventures come flooding back:The puppy farm.The gentle untying of the shoelace.THIS! IS! MY! HOME! NOW!Our first night together.Running on the beach.Sadie and Sophie and Sophie Dee.Shared ice-cream cones.Thanksgivings.Tofurky.Car rides.Laughter.Eye rain.Chicken and rice.Paralysis.Surgery.Christmases.Walks.Dog parks.Squirrel chasing.Naps.Snuggling.'Fishful Thinking.'The adventure at sea.Gentle kisses.Manic kisses.More eye rain.So much eye rain.Red ball.The veterinarian holds a stethoscope up to Lily's chest, listening for her heartbeat.All dogs go to heaven.'Your mother's name is Witchie-Poo.' I stroke Lily behind her ears the way that used to calm her. 'Look for her.'OH FUCK IT HURTS.I barely whisper. 'She will take care of you.

The sun was hot and bright. A day for fishing, for swimming, for playing tennis and having fun, and they put my Christopher in the ground.

Once I was in the cold dim room, without furniture or carpet or rugs, only a dollhouse that wasn't as wonderful as the original, I opened the tall and narrow closet door and began my ascent up the steep and narrow stairs. On my way to the attic.On my way to where I'd find my Christopher, again...

Heartbreak is an altogether different thing. Disappointment doesn't grow into heartbreak, nor does failure...It comes form the loss of love or the perceived loss of love...Heartbreak is what happens when love is lost.

I wanted to pretend for just a little longer that I was whole again. Happy. Then I'd figure out how to pick up the pieces and move on.

Tears don't bring people back." Pain stabs from my chest to my fingertips."Tears aren't for the people we've lost. They are for us. So that we can remember and celebrate and miss them and feel human.

He loved me and I would rather have him become one with me than disappear from my life. Then I'd never have to be away from him ever again. He said I was important to him. So why did he leave me? How could he leave me?

I realised I really didn__ know what I was doing and I felt her trace drowning in the middle of the cars and the people, in the middle of the streets and far away, in the secrets she so jealously kept.I felt it. We were ever so close, ever so far.

This is one of the great human mysteries: why do works of art about bad things such as loss and deprivation make us feel good?

Less is less. Heartbreak is heartbreak. You think I'm sitting here gloating. Telling myself that my suffering beats yours? Hurt is hurt. You don't measure these things.

Sometimes you're going to have to let one person go a thousand different times, a thousand different ways, and there's nothing pathetic or abnormal about that. You are human.

There are a million ways to lose someone you love.

You see, because [Norfolk is] stuck out here on the east, on this hump jutting into the sea, it's not on the way to anywhere. People going north and south, they bypass it altogether. For that reason, it's a peaceful corner of England, rather nice. But it's also something of a lost corner.'Someone claimed after the lesson that Miss Emily had said Norfolk was England's 'lost corner' because that was were all the lost property found in the country ended up.Ruth said one evening, looking out at the sunset, that 'when we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we didn't have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we were grown up, and we were free to travel the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.

Love is just like the flower; it has hidden depths that we rarely ever explore. Beneath the surface lies a network of roots. You can admire the flower for what it is, or you can dig deeper. The more you dig, the more you will find. The real reasons we love a person sometimes exist in the darkest and deepest part of us, the part that knows no logic_or rationale.

She took a step and didn't want to take any more, but she did.

When you lose someone, you get used to living day to day without them. But you__l never get used to the _10 second heartbreak._ That__ the time it takes to wake to full consciousness each day and remember_