Broken Hearted

Everyone's heart breaks sometimes, at some point, in some way. It is part of life for everyone.

Survivors of crisis, trauma and illness feel this more acutely than others but not because our hurt is more valid or hurts more than someone else's. 

Instead, it's more intensely damaging, because we are already too damaged. 

We are literally on our knees crawling, trying to pick up all the shattered and scattered pieces of ourselves. So, it's impossible not to be cut far worse by the sharp edges of a broken heart.  Brutally ripping into a preexisting wound.

Struggling to survive takes away the resiliency to bounce back intact, when trying to process new pain. Suffering makes any new wound instantly deeper and heavily salted.

A new bruise compounding on top of an old bruise, turning to dust already broken shards.

On top of this unbearable pain, we can feel guilt, shame, sadness, grief and loss, solely because we do not have the ability to be okay anymore.

We can not explain it to others, because it is not their reality. It can sound selfish or petty, because it is not their reality.

Most people's view is from a place where the breaking happens from an intact whole. A whole self that suffers from the breaking, but still has room to recover and heal. 

However, survivors are already fighting to hold on to the remaining pieces of the whole. When another break comes, we find ourselves without the room to recover or heal. The room is already packed full of broken pieces, the wounds are already torn open, and the heart is already failing to beat strong enough.

Already broken hearts can continue to break, but the tragic truth for survivors is that with each break it becomes harder to fit the pieces back together. Some pieces become so destroyed there is no way to make them ever fit again, and some hearts become so frail they haven't the strength to even try again to rebuild. 

Some broken hearts can not recover.

Sometimes there are not enough band-aids. Sometimes all we can hope for is to someday find enough pieces to attempt to build something else from scratch.