THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING....

A few months ago my friend texted me in the middle of the night and asked how he could pick up the pieces of his broken heart. The pain was excruciating, he said. “You’ll get over it soon enough.”, I replied… and then I bit my tongue.
Fast forward to this morning…I watched a sad movie where this lady heard mass for her husband's first death anniversary. Her eyes spoke of her pain.
I’ve only had my heart broken once and it was squarely between God, my bestfriend and me. Anything else ---whatever pain, disappointment, hurdle--- after that fateful day would be incomparable. The pain is incomparable. People often say time heals all wounds. I’ll have to wait and see if that’s true. People shouldn’t be so general. After all, there are so many degrees of pain. My favorite writer once wrote, “You should never believe anyone who says they know exactly how you feel...” We’re all bound to suffer a broken heart, that is, if we haven’t already. You know what I mean, right? Losing someone we love feels as though we’ve been hurled into the great Void. You’re on top of the world one second and suddenly you’re falling down down down. And you wait…to hit rock bottom. Except, how do you know you haven’t hit it already? We attempt to smile and hope people can’t tell we’re faking it. We stay up trying to decipher God’s message. We attempt to laugh and find ourselves stopping midway. We attempt to make sense of it. This life---or this semblance of a life. At times the pain seems too much for us to bear. When will the tears be enough? How much loneliness can my heart take? Why? Why her? Why now? The questions are endless. And each morning we get up from bed and stare out the window. Look at that, the world is still up and about. Why do we do it?
I don’t know about you but I think it’s because we’re hoping today could be the day we finally get an answer. Take it from Garbage, “The trick is to keep breathing.”