I know it is an idiom: The idea of a broken heart. Your heart doesn’t literally break like some glass ornament that can shatter when it falls from the tree. It is merely an expression indicating great pain. Pain usually associated with the loss of a love.
I know this pain.
I know this pain intimately.
For me, this pain, while usually referred to in emotional terms, is one I experience on a physical level as well as on an emotional level. Most often, for me, it has been associated with the loss of a love, the end of a hope of a shared joy, the end of a dream that will never become a reality. For me, mostly, this broken heart experience occurred when I finally realized that the relationship I thought I had was nothing like what I thought I had. Broken hearts, for me, represent endings.
It is a very real emotional pain, but I also experience a tangible physical pain. It resides in my chest, just to the right of center and it feels like someone wedged a pick ax in at that particular point and is now trying to pull my heart right out from my body or, at least crush it so that it beats no more.
It is a physical pain as well as an emotional pain.
What I didn’t know, was that sometimes, a broken heart occurs for reasons other than lost, failed, or unrequited love.
A broken heart can occur sans the love between two humans.
A broken heart can occur when a dream that you loved, that you hoped for, that you worked for, dies.
Broken hearts might always be about love, but sometimes they are not about lovers.
The Wild Mind 
All true. I understand the physical pain as well. Posts like yours help though – to share the pain diminishes it for some reason.
Nice thoughts WildMind
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Thanks, jassnight. I feel the same way: when I read someone else’s pain, I feel I am not alone in my own journey. I feel a little more connected to the rest of existence somehow.
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Definitely true, TWM. The physical as well as the emotional pain is there. Also true that it is not always a lover but definitely a love that has broken the heart.
Now, as I am always late to the party, off to read today’s post.
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No worries, if you are late to the party, I guarantee I am even later, Nicki! Dang, I have to get your blog on my phone so I can catch up at recess! 😀
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Yes, it is indeed physical as well as mental. I am much better than I was, but there are still times when some memory comes to me in vivid detail and my heart begins to race as tears instantly spring to my eyes. During the worst of it I had to get up out of bed in the wee hours night after night to pace back and forth while the tears fell, my chest feeling like it was being ripped open from the inside out. Adrenaline would flow through me like methamphetamine, forcing away any possibility of sleep. I went for weeks with only an hour or two of sleep each night.
I would have to fight myself with all my willpower to keep from grabbing the cellphone and making a useless call to plead to deaf ears. Then I had to bring myself to face the reality of the situation, that this person who makes tears come to my eyes feels nothing for me. She dumped me and she is in bed with someone else at this very moment. She undoubtably gives him all the charming little bits of her personality and skill at lovemaking that she once bestowed upon me. I am not even second best. I am nothing to her. Just something that was used until it was no longer needed. It is then that anger rises and I have to snap myself out of it and just concentrate on the present.
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Sometimes, Custis, those ones are the most difficult to heal from. I wonder if we ever do?
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