Heart Like a Crab

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Nobyembre 30, 2013 ni Tara Chica

LOVE is PAIN, isn’t it? Boy oh boy, it’s pain when you’re in love. It’s pain when you’re outta love. It’s pain when there’s too much love and it’s pain when there’s no love at all. It’s painstakingly, bone shakingly, chest achingly torturous! Love hurts. And what hurts most is when you love someone and they just go ahead break your heart like a Kit-Kat.

So, recently this dude broke my heart. This was the first time i have ever truly experienced this wretched feeling called a heartbreak.I don’t need to go into why and how, but all I know is I allowed myself to love and I got truly kicked in the buttocks. So, feeling the pangs of misery, I decided to do the only acceptable thing you can do when you feel utterly heartbroken: I went to the pub! ‘I’m done! I’ve had enough!’, I exclaimed, slamming my fist down on the bar. I GIVE UP ON LOOOOVE!’

During these dark hours, I considered turning into a cold ice maiden, cutting my hair off or  join an all  feminist group. Maybe closing off my heart altogether would allow me to focus all my energy on building a multi-billion pound business empire!

That’ll show him!

But then I began to ponder: Isn’t heartbreak just an inevitability of love? I mean, maybe Ja Rule was right all along? Pain is love. Does that mean my heart is always going to get broken every time I decide to love someone? Maybe it’s not an inevitability, but that will always be the risk you take when you start seeing someone new. What about the other kinds of love? The time my dog ate my double cheese burger that was a heartbreak.
The day I ruined my favorite dress – heartbreak. Someone eating the last piece of chocolate that you had been looking forward to  all day – oh man, don’t tell me that’s not heartbreaking. And of course, losing someone you love and care about – that’s the worst kind of heartbreak of all. I mean, it just gets ya right in the cardiacas!
I tried to think of the benefits of having my heart gouged from my chest and battered with a sledge hammer. How could I have let myself get into this situation? Have I got ‘moron’ tattooed on my forehead or what? And that’s when it hit me: that’s right – i know people who have been through this before. And you know what? Despite their heartbreaks, they have always been able to love again.

Did you know when a crab loses its leg (say, in a freak fishing accident) and it is thrown back in the ocean, it grows a new, stronger, more agile leg? Mr. Crab now kicks ass on the sea bed, shuffling around like Rocky of the crustaceans. Well, maybe the heart is just like the crab. Once in a while, a piece of heart gets damaged or broken, but after a little time and patience a new piece grows in its place. This new piece of heart, like the new crab leg, is stronger, more resistant and basically kicks butt. The heart becomes whole again.

Kapow!

You see, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’d much rather have felt the sensation of loving something or someone and then had it taken away than never felt the joy of love in the first place. I mean, you can’t possibly know real, bonafide, tingling, zappy love without knowing pain. It’s like Yin and Yang – there’s no one without the other. I’m not saying don’t learn from your mistakes or make a  man bouquet for every  guy that comes in your life , but do yourself a favor and don’t close up shop altogether.

So this is what I learned: when someone breaks your heart, you’ve got two choices: you either put it in the deep freeze and let yourself become a cynical crazy snow queen/king (which is what I was THIS close to becoming) OR you let your heart become a crab. You pick yourself up and never lose the capacity to dance on the sea bed – and that, peeps, is my metaphor for love.