It’s definitely not controversial to say that there’s nothing fun about being dumped or losing someone who you once deeply loved, valued and trusted. It can feel like there’s no way out of the depths of feelings in moments where you’re wallowing in bed, surrounded by balled up tissues and cliches, sneaking longing glances at the wine bottle on your dresser. When you lose someone who was so important to you, that pain means you’ll never be the same again. But hey, you’ll never be the same again! We are supposed to change.
At the risk of sounding unconventional, I think break ups are kind of awesome. In fact, sometimes in a twisted way, I yearn for the person I was when I was heartbroken.
When one experiences a break up with a partner, it’s a jagged rip through the fabric of your life and how you predicted that it’d be knit. The result leaves you completely displaced from your previous understandings of life and love. This disillusionment and alienation is horrifying, but it means that the possibilities for the future are endless.
When I experienced my first heartbreak, I felt more alone than I ever had, but this isolation and confusion led me to look for answers and solutions to pain in the world around me. The result was that I consumed art, and I mean consumed. There was absolutely nothing passive in the way I listened to music, read books, looked at paintings and watched movies. I felt everything so deeply.
I would literally throw up to certain Radiohead songs, I cried to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poetry, and I went into a trancelike state when I watched a movie where Charlie Kaufman was the screenwriter.
But I was almost grateful to be hurting because it meant that I felt being alive more viscerally than I normally did. Almost every step and breath I took, I was, sometimes brutally, reminded that I was only human. Yet, being human meant I was never alone. When I was lost, confused, sad, I turned to art and found these feelings represented by other people in various ways. I repeated to myself that my feelings couldn’t be explained or understood by anyone who hasn’t lived or loved.
Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately), I’m not currently heartbroken and no song, movie, or book is striking me as deeply as the media did when I was going through it. Until I listened to West End Girl by Lily Allen, her new album that released on October 24th and captures all her angst, pain, and feelings of betrayal after her divorce with ex-husband, David Harbour. To me, it represented exactly what I believe art is— an outlet and container for all those feelings you don’t know what to do with. Sometimes I feel like pop singers just churn out basic catchy tunes to make more money and build a brand, but with West End Girl, listeners can really feel how Allen poured her soul post-divorce into the album. Listeners say she wrote the album in 10 days which only goes to show how much Allen was feeling.
When you’re overflowing with feeling, the only way out is through and sometimes the only way through is to create. I remember how when I was emotionally wrecked, my journal was thriving with pages and pages of thoughts, observations and rants. As Kurt Cobain once said, “Thank you for the tragedy. I need it for my art.”
The thing is, sadness begs to be felt. But it’s also a feeling that is heard and understood through art. So many poems, songs, and paintings are borne out of tragedy. It reminds me of a quote from Egyptian-Canadian writer, Noor Naga, who wrote, “Is it possible to contemplate a thing— anything at all— without sadness?”
I guess my point is that pain is a part of life, and a valuable one at that. You can’t have happiness without risking yourself for the alternative. You’re never going to be as young and naive as you are now— so embrace it, let yourself live and learn. Break ups can be the catalyst needed to restart and to put a new plan into action. However, if you aren’t into the self-help angle, take my word for it— heartbreak can be the push you need to connect with art on a whole new soulful level.