do i need this person to live?

heartbreak interview #1

Jul 03, 2024

since a love letter to you season two has turned into a heartbreak-edition, let’s continue on this subject. in fact, that is the topic of todays letter. because when you’re heartbroken, you quickly realize it’s the only thing you want to talk about. to think about, to read about, to reflect on: for hours. i’d say listen to too – but not in the immediate aftermath. initially music is too intense (i walked around with my noise-canceling headphones turned on but silent the first weeks of my heartbreak – a friend of mine did the same – actively listening to nothing). but when the silence becomes to empty and songs start making sense again, you want to listen to nothing else but heartache too (my hyperfixation was storms by fleetwood mac, chocker).

after a while i started feeling like a nuisance around my friends, for always changing the subject to this topic. so i started searching for some other place to divert all that attention: articles, books, movies. i began reading conversations on love by natascha lunn (just the chapters about loss) and i realized, as i read the interviews, that i could do this. i couldn’t think, feel, be in nothing else but this heartbreak – and i had no idea of how to get out of it. so why dont i just ask other people how they did it? interview people about their heartbreak? (epiphany).

because if it’s one thing i learned from all this pain, it’s that people carry around so much wisdom. and they have a lot to say, too, once you start asking. it was only from talking about it, opening up and being vulnerable about it, that i learned that not only did it make me feel better; it also brought me closer to my friends and family – even strangers. pain has that funny side-effect, of deepening relationships by inviting this new dynamic. because by allowing another person to be a witness to our hurt, we dismantle those walls and can meet each other on a whole new level.

so i’d been walking around with this idea for some time, reflecting on it (that familiar idea stage where everything is an exciting blur), wondering how i could give it life. i finally asked my best friend ellen, a person i’d known for less than a year but who had become one of my closest friends, (all from a strange desperate need to sit next to her on our first french lesson). a friend who i also, of course, had spent countless hours talking to about Him.

so i knew she would be well-versed in the subject.

do you want to meet up at the skatepark and be my interview guinea-pig, i texted her one day

yeeeeees, she responded

so we set out

biking along the river in the hot june sun.

initially i had no idea where this project would lead (i still don’t), but im exploring as i go and we’ll see where it’ll end up. and before the interview i’d brainstormed a couple of questions that i wanted answers to, so after we had skated for a while, we sat down in the grass, and started.

and i initiated with that question that rolls so effortlessly off the tongue but carries so much weight:

have you ever had your heart broken?

she inhales

yes

the first time i fell in love, she sighs.

she proceeds to tell me about her first heartbreak, a guy she met at her old job when she was 20.

when it’s the first time, she says, i think it feels worse than it should.

because the pain is not proportional to what that person meant to you. you’re just so scared of ending up alone again after the first time of falling in love.

especially when you feel like you’ve met someone so incredibly important to you you feel as if you can’t live without them.

how did the first moment of the heartbreak feel? i ask

the worst i ever felt was actually the day or days before we broke up, when it was so uncertain, and i remember thinking: it has never felt this painful to live. i have never felt this bad in my entire life.

she gazed out at the kids doing ollies in the park

it was like i had unlocked a new kind of pain i’d never experienced previously

and i didnt know where to go, what i would do with the next minute of my life.

ellen continues to explain how she spent that day at work in some kind of manic state, always trying to do something with her hands in between the customer-care calls, constantly drawing in her notebook.

one time i just started writing down the lyrics to a song, just to pass the time somehow.

how did that pain change over time?

we were still working together, and the first few days after our break-up we weren’t even speaking. i would just sit next to him and feel how the cells in my body were moving toward the cells in his body, wanting.

but after a month or so things changed, and it was like i could feel, in my body, that i didn’t need to worry anymore

and i was so happy

knowing that no external part could affect my feelings

only i could do that

that was incredible, she exhales, her eyes alight

to feel that kind of independence again.

but i promised myself, she continues, even when i felt that happy by myself, that if he came back and said he wanted to try again, i’d give him a chance

because it’s so unique for two people to want each other

so i had to try.

(and she did)

he came back the next day

it was the best day of my life, she says, laughing

but not because of him, she quickly adds

that was just a small part of it.

we continue our conversation. and here i think i should add that ours is the kind of friendship where we can talk about everything and anything all at once, so naturally our interview is side-tracked by many changes of topics. it’s more fluid than i thought it would be, and ellen often asks my questions back to me, so we spend a good amount of time trying to come up with answers together.

when i ask her about her definition for heartbreak she wants me to answer first

my definition? i say, to stop and think

i guess it’s that kind of panic-sadness. when all you want is to have that person close, but you can’t. and you’re left with that pain that feels so physical in your body – a strain over your heart and your shoulders – and it hurts so bad you don’t know how you’re gonna get through the next minute.

and there’s no logic to that kind of pain, i add

because you know that you’re going to get through it, i mean you have to

the next minute, the next hour, the next month, even

a pain, ellen echoes

isn’t it more a kind of emptiness?

that’s how i remember it, at least, she adds

i just felt so incredibly empty.

after a while i say

yeah, maybe more of a painful kind of acute lacking

because i remember feeling, after my break-up, that the absence of that person just felt so poignant, i continue

since you still think that that person is so much better than everyone else, it leaves you feeling like every other social situation is so meaningless, which is horrible.

i know, she adds

like every moment would have been better had they been there

yeah, i say,

and when that person isn’t there, it’s like you can still feel the energy that they could have brought to the room, had they been there

what they would have added by being there, she finishes for me

yeah,

and the feeling of living in a kind of black and white version of the world , i sigh.

some kids run by and we get distracted by their game, absorbed into the world around us again.

what about love? i ask her

ellen lets go of the children and turns back to me

repeat that?

what’s your idea about love, i ask,

and did it change after being heartbroken?

hmm

i don’t think i had an idea of love before, i was so young. and you discover so much the first time you open yourself up to another person in that way

but a friend of mine told me about this model that i think sums it up kind of well

according to him, love is composed of three things:

friendship, passion, and romance.

friendship is friendship obviously, she adds

that you’re good friends and actually like spending time together

passion is more about sex: good chemistry, butterflies

but the third part, romance, is often quite overlooked.

it’s the desire to actually want the other person, to want court them, woo them, be kind to them.

it’s a bit boring, this model, she laughs

but true.