When Breakups Hurt More Than Death
Pinch yourself — as long as you feel pain, you’re still alive
While the concept of death is quite complex, we don’t have to be clinically dead to experience death. A breakup, a divorce, or a broken engagement are all life experiences similar to death.
The day my fiancé called off our wedding is the closest thing I can recall to death on earth.
For a moment, my soul had left my body, leaving an empty shell crawling on the floor — completely depersonalized. From above, I began to observe my inert, seemingly dead body.
How long did this moment last? It seemed like forever.
Ultimately, it was the excruciating pain that brought me back to life. Suffocating, the newborn I was finally let her vociferous, shrill, and piercing first cry out. It stopped hours laters when my vocal cords dried from crying rivers.
I was still alive
The end of the illusion of my ‘Mr. Right’ was my first experience of death on earth.
Nevertheless, feeling the pain of the devastating heartbreak was a sign that I was still alive. I rebirthed into the same empty shell I left for a short period of time.
As I crawled out of my self-made coffin, I contemplated the bitter reality of loss. The loss of a person but moreover the loss of an illusion. I had to recover from Prince Charming Syndrome.
Yet, as I lost my “Once in my lifetime,” as I used to call him, it wasn’t the death of an illusion that was the most frightening; it was taking the risk of being alive on my own without anybody to serve as my Higher Power.
Just as the Higher Power for an alcoholic is the bottle and for a drug addict, the drug, my addiction to love resulted in my ex-fiancé being my Higher Power. This was a big change in my life as I now had to live alone without someone to hide behind.
I like to quote Don Miguel Ruiz when I recall the memory of my near-soul death experience. In the book, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, he writes:
“Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — the risk to be alive and express what we really are.”
On my own, I had to go on a quest to find who I really was and express it authentically.
A journey back from death to life
My post soul-death recovery was the most challenging part of living with heartbreak. Nobody but myself helped me through this journey back from death to life.
I rushed into a new relationship that ended up being abusive. I have had all sorts of mental health issues — depression, suicidal thoughts, and eating disorders are just a few.
All of that changed when I was inspired to sign a contract with myself in a symbolic, self-marriage ritual. In my white dress on a new-moon night, I made a vow to work through my pain day by day, hour by hour, second by second, “until death do us part.”
I chose to make space for the lightest, brightest moments of my life and let the heavy energy of my soul-death experience dissipate.
The miracle of being alive
Time heals all the wounds, sometimes leaving us with some scars that remind us of the miracle of being alive.
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold. I have fixed my broken heart with gold and made it a piece of art. The art of being alive through adversity allows the pain to stop.
In the end, this soul-death experience was the most rewarding experience of my life thus far. It was the wake up call to treat my body, mind, and spirit with love and respect. It made me stronger and bolder and for that, I’m forever grateful.