Overcoming Heartbreak You've Locked Away

I learned years ago that what is the most personal is also the most universal. By disclosing to another human being our deepest secrets, we tell the story of humankind, sing the song of the ancients, and create the poetry of the soul. In baring the darkness within us, we find light, and companionship.

Why is it, then, that there is such a powerful pull to lock our secrets in some cold inner vault and throw away the key? How is it that some things we most need to share end up in solitary confinement, living and dying within our consciousness alone?

But the practice of disclosing your self (strengths and weaknesses, talents and foibles, achievements and mortifications) is what prepares you to go deeper than usual with the one you love, the partner in whom you seek a heart-to-heart reciprocity. You learn that together you can transcend life’s painful episodes—past and present; those humiliating events that might have conquered you but for your redemptive sharing.

Ride Into Hell

My most humiliating experience began during a winter day of after-school sledding. Cheeks flushed against the cold and trembling with excitement, I stand in line with three other boys who wait their turn to dive through the air, land on sleds, and race to the bottom of the snow-packed hill. My turn comes up and I giggle uncontrollably when body and sled unite for another wild ride.

I gather myself at hill’s bottom in preparation for the trek back up, when I see five boys forming a curtain of bodies around me. Jimmy, a sixth-grade classmate, emerges from the circle, hands gyrating in boxer fashion. Is he playing some kind of joke?

Just then a fist whips out and connects solidly with my eye. Three blows follow hard after. I dizzily try to find him in my vision, but he is dancing around. The street itself looks tilted, like I’m in an elevator in an earthquake. More hammer blows sting my cheeks, nose, and chin.

The next half dozen blows I neither see nor hear, and wouldn’t even know about had not bystanders later told me. Mercifully, blackness swallows me like a snake swallowing a fish. 

When I come to, the world looks red. Two neighborhood friends have heaved shoulders under each of my arms and are dragging me home. My body feels foreign and out of joint. It’s not the physical pain, primarily, that feels so alien, but the humiliation of having not defended myself, the horror of having no answer to Jimmy’s evil assault.

A Real and Present Liberation

Here is what I’m driving at: it is precisely through retelling and reliving our stories that our isolation, and the evil embedded in our memories, is overcome. Every transparent disclosure cleanses and dresses old wounds until such time as we are substantially healed. Healing requires transcending fear and shame, and recovering our lost dignities.

Are you wondering if perhaps I cut off the Jimmy story prematurely?

Yes, you’re right. So if you are prepared to listen, I will tell you about Delta.          

That night Mom uses scissors to snip off my undershirt, to avoid pulling it over the cuts on my face. Dad retires to his den, grumbling about having a son who can’t hold his own in a fight.

I crawl into bed, my mind playing mental movies of flashing lights, falling bodies, derisive sniggers, and banging blows. I curl into a ball, cringing. A consoling image vies with the ghostly collage until it comes into focus. It is my girlfriend Delta’s face. 

Delta is my fledgling attempt at having a girlfriend, my fifth and sixth grade flame. We talk at night on the phone and sometimes hold hands during recess. She has a ponytail, blue eyes, and a smile that tickles my insides.

Though I don’t want to go to school tomorrow wearing my raccoon black eyes and purple bruises, I will go. Delta will help me through this terrible pain. She will know that I am actually quite courageous; it’s just that nobody ever taught me how to fistfight. I drift into a restless sleep, grasping the image of her warm hug.

The next morning at school I arrive late. The whole class, even the teacher, leer at my puffed-out face. I scrunch down in my seat low enough to become invisible. An eternity later the buzzer sounds. Everyone tears out of the room for the playground. I stay behind waiting for Delta to come running down the hallway to find me.

After five minutes, I peep out and the hall is empty. Another five minutes and the buzzer sounds. The first boy into the room, Terry, runs up to me breathless, and blurts, “Delta thinks you’re a coward. She’s broken up with you. She doesn’t want you to call her anymore.”

I learned enough at that moment to write a small book. The topic? A dozen reasons for never loving someone because it only leads to heartbreak. Not that I was intellectually aware of what I learned. This was a different kind of learning: the way a dog learns about cars by being run over. I unconsciously decided that genuine intimacy isn’t worth the pain; that relating superficially is the safest way to proceed.

But let me say what you know from your own life experience. While there are plenty of heartbreaks inherent in living and loving, they are most effectively overcome by baring the heart and cleansing the soul, by disclosing your pain to a trusted person whose gracious understanding brings you back to social solidarity.

Over the years I’ve risked sharing my inner life many times, and have many times received healing and encouragement. If this weren’t true, I’d be writing a post called, “How to Avoid Pain in One Easy Lesson: Clam Up.” I want to support you in your search for inner healing. I want to say:  

“Whatever pain you’ve secretly endured, 

go ahead and share it, so that you can keep 

finding the courage to love again.”