Surviving heartbreak

Nothing shocks me anymore. In a country where buses falling from overhead are nothing new, what else can shock you, right?

Or at least that was what I thought…

One afternoon, after a seemingly uneventful morning at the office (yes, uneventful, because a normal day for me at work means me throwing people out of the 32nd floor window and that day it didn’t happen), my mobile phone rang. It was Y, a good friend of mine. Curious, I immediately took his call.

To my surprise, Y was crying on the other end of the line. He was crying because he had just broken up with his partner, and as we were talking, he was somewhere in BGC trying to figure out how he would survive the pain that he was enduring.

It had been a while since the last time I received a call of this nature, and to be honest I didn’t quite know what to do.  It was like putting a fresh-out-of-school, newly-trained call center agent onto the production floor, where every call that he’d receive is a possible termination notice.

As Y and I talked, as he disclosed what had happened in between his sobs and sniffs, I felt his pain. I knew that every breath he was taking at that moment felt like a dagger in his chest. I knew that there are only few issues that can destroy you faster than matters of the heart. For someone who has been down Heartbreak Avenue a few unfortunate times in the past, I knew that no amount of consolation can make you feel better, or feel whole, again. At least not for the next few weeks…

To Y, my dearest friend: I’m not going to say that things are going to be okay (I know I said it a few times while we were talking, which is why I retracted it every single time) because they won’t be. I can never explain why this has happened to you. I can never answer the perennial questions of why hearts get broken and where they go to heal.

But this is what I’m sure of: You’ll survive this. You told me that you didn’t know how to handle the pain, but trust me, you’ll figure it out and, in the process of learning it, learn how to be happy again.

For the next few weeks, you’ll be miserable. You’ll probably go on a drinking spree, and when you’ve consumed all the wine/vodka/tequila that your body can handle, you will then lock yourself up in your condo and isolate yourself from us. That’s perfectly okay.

Take this time to lick your wounds, to retrace your steps, and, most importantly, to pick up the pieces of your broken heart. I know all of this is going to take some time, but time is our friend. When you regain your footing, when you once again see the beauty in the concrete, just let me know and I’ll be at your door in an instant with a bottle of our favorite red and a bag of chicharon.

At the end of all this, I can see you, me and the rest of our friends laughing at how silly you were that day. We’ll all crack a joke or two about it, probably even cry at some point. We may even plot the untimely demise of your ex, but until that day comes, my friend, you have our love. And honestly, that’s all you’re ever going to need at this point.

Winston Churchill once said; “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

You’re in hell right now, so just keep going. We’ll meet you at hell’s exit gate, I promise.

Park Quilling, 28, is an HR practitioner.