THE BEAUTY AND PAIN BEHIND HEARTBREAK
Heartbreak is a universal phenomenon. When a relationship with someone you love ends, it can send you into the depths of despair. Three years ago, my break up left a gargantuan void in my life; it sent me from being carefree and confident to someone I didn’t recognize – a weepy, puffy-eyed mess. In public, I tried my best to keep it together, feigning smiles and trying to force myself to laugh. Yet behind closed doors, I was like a lovesick teen, crying so much I thought I’d run out of tears. Whenever the soulful Al-lah-o-Ak-bar resonated from the loudspeakers, I’d make anguished pleas to the Universe, to put an end to this all-encompassing emotional torment.
When we fall in love, we risk getting our hearts broken. Like the song goes, Love Bites. And science proves it too. After a break-up, according to medical experts, it is completely normal to feel down in the dumps, abandoned, angry, hurt and sometimes stripped of your identity. In fact, Doctor Google says this condition is recognised medically and known as The Broken Heart Syndrome. Scientific evidence shows that heartbreak triggers painful chemical changes in our brain. Dr Helen Fisher, a world-renowned expert in human attraction, did an experiment proving that dumped students suffered agonising withdrawal symptoms, not dissimilar to those experienced by junkies craving their next hit. Chemically, this makes sense as apparently when you fall passionately in love, your brain secretes several feel-good chemicals including dopamine (a craving hormone) and oxytocin (aka the cuddle compound). They are all responsible for that fuzzy butterfly feeling in the pit of your stomach.
Post-split, science buffs say this intoxicating ‘lover’s high’ comes to a grinding halt. Instead the brain produces much lower levels of serotonin (the happy hormone) and instead churns out super stressed hormones, explaining why love can cause so much grief. In essence, heartbreak weakens your immune system and you need to allow yourself to grieve while slowly building up your strength again.
Comfortingly, you’re not alone. Every day, millions of men and women end their romances and suffer the same lovesick angst. Raspy-voiced pop sensation Macy Gray, who shot to fame thanks to her heartbreak ballad, I Try (from her multi-platinum debut album) once confided in me about love and relationships before her performance at the Dubai Jazz International Festival: “Losing someone you love is always devastating,” she admitted. “To get over the pain of heartbreak, there’s that mathematical formula that says you need to calculate the time you were together and then give yourself half that time to heal. I think you just have to go through heartache. I’ve definitely been there.” No doubt, her rocky romances inspired her best lyrics.
And that’s the silver lining. Love gone wrong has often served as a catalyst to self-knowledge as well as legendary artistic creation. During the 1930s Frida Kahlo, one of the world’s greatest Latin American artists, painted several haunting portraits thanks to her own topsy-turvy love life. Today, pop stars probably pray for relationship breakdowns to inspire perceptive lyrics – if the award-winning British songstress Adele hadn’t been jilted, who’s to say if she would’ve written such moving ballads as Someone Like You and Rolling in the Deep. Back then she was crying herself to sleep but now she’s laughing all the way to the bank! While the rest of us may not all be able to come up with a best-selling album or work that ends up in the Lourve, a breakup is certainly a catalyst for a powerful, personal transformation. Although we might not realize it at the time, heartbreak is actually a blessing in disguise, a magical opportunity to grow and blossom. As Lao Tzu once said: “New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings”.
Love,
