Lessons on How to Heal a Broken Heart

By Timia Cobb
Web Content Contributor

Everytime I heard the song “The One That Got Away” by Katy Perry I couldn’t help but think about the first guy I loved. However, I also thought about the many nights I spent crying listening to the song in high school. Now, whenever I hear “The The One That Got Away”, it’s nothing more than a song that happens to remind me of a boy who isn’t in my life anymore. The way to heal a broken heart is time. It can take years, months and multiple mistakes but learning to live with the pain of a broken heart will allow it to heal.

 The hardest time to deal with a broken heart is a week after its been broken. Some people don’t know how to gather their emotions after being hurt. It takes about a week for it to sink in that someone/something you love is gone and can’t be in your life anymore. You might want to shut yourself off from others, lay in bed all day and that’s okay because you’re human and you’re aloud to hurt. Forcing yourself to live life as if it doesn’t feel like you have a hole where your heart use to be isn’t going to help. Pretending that you’re okay isn’t going to help you feel better. The first step is to accept that the pain doesn’t have to last forever, even if it feels like it will.

Maybe a couple of months have passed by but everything reminds you of them. Everything doesn’t seem as exciting as it used to be and the feeling of loneliness has become the only thing to keep you company. At this point, try to surround yourself with people you love or doing something that makes you happy. This can be hanging out with family, friends, going out and dancing; just do anything that allows time to stop and remind yourself of how good living feels, even without them around. Recollect on how life was before them, so you can prepare yourself to move on to life after them. However, don’t bombard yourself. You don’t have to go out every night and day to avoid thinking about them, that isn’t how you move on. Doing this could possibly only cause stress which could lead you to seek comfort from the wrong person or either the person/thing you’re trying to move on from.

When you’re trying to heal your heart you might not do it perfectly, but is there really a perfect way to heal a heart? You could mess up, for example, you use people to avoid loneliness.  This can be by having multiple hook-ups in order to feel short term moments of intimacy and solace. You could also run back to the person/thing that is the cause of the broken heart you’re trying to heal. We’ve all seen the scenes from movies of the heart broken girl who drunkenly calls her ex only to feel guilty or regret it ten minutes after. You can do this; you can make these mistakes and be okay. It might not make you feel better right then but it can be the push you need to reconcile with the emotional rollercoaster that is your heart.

Now that you’ve learned living with a broken heart isn’t anyway to live, seek closure. Stop blaming yourself for the ending of your relationship, asking yourself what you did wrong or thinking you’re not good enough for love. This is the tough part of healing a heart, it’s not easy to let go of the emotional pain you’ve been carrying around. Some people have gotten so used to the feeling of being hurt that it almost feels normal. The simplest way to get through this stage, is to figure out how to forgive yourself and to learn how to love yourself enough. Loving yourself can be talking to someone, taking yourself on dates, allowing yourself to understand that you deserve to be happy. Slowly that hole in your chest doesn’t feel so hollow anymore because the love that broke you has been replaced with the self love you’ve learned.

Somehow you can go days without even thinking or being reminded of them. There will be times when old emotions return but instead of feeling sadness, it makes you happy. You think about the good times you had and understand you’ll have that again someday. That person or thing you tried to forget becomes nothing more than a scar left on your skin, it’ll always be there but easily forgotten. They’ve become nothing more than something remembered when you hear a cheesy 2011 pop song.

Feature image by Timia Cobb via Canva