The Apology You Need Most Is Probably For Your Broken Heart

The one you gave your heart to usually doesn't offer closure — and it isn’t easy

John Mayer seems to say it best: “When you’re dreaming with a broken heart, waking up is the hardest part.”

When your heart is broken, you feel like you’re the only one who’s ever known true torture. It feels like someone scooped out your heart like a low-carb bagel, and you feel like a shell of yourself.

I’ve been there before. And if I’m honest, I’m still there.

You try to forgive them; you try to forgive yourself for feeling the hurt. But the pain is like a dull ache. And any reminder (an Instagram post, a mention of their name) can feel like getting kicked right into the broken bone that’s only slightly begun to heal.

As much as I would want an apology from the one who broke my heart, I have to be honest with myself: Would it do me any good?

You turn on Beyonce’s Homecoming Live album; you try to remember you are that girl. You blast Deborah Cox and RL’s “We Can’t Be Friends,” and you wail along out of tune. You talk to your friends again, and again, and again until you’re just too embarrassed because you are ashamed that your heart still loves the one person who hurt you the most. You avoid the friends and places that remind you of them. And as you slightly heal, you hope against hope that an Instagram won’t send you back down a lonely spiral.

Love is wonderful, but heartbreak? Big trash.

As much as I would want an apology from the one who broke my heart, I have to be honest with myself: Would it do me any good? If I’ve felt so much pain for so long, would an “I’m sorry” really fix anything? As time goes by, I don’t think it will. And so the time apart, however gut-wrenching, is probably the thing I need the most.

So how do you get over an incinerated heart without getting an apology? If you know, my comments are open. One of the ways I get through each day is that I’ve learned that I can show up for myself. I don’t have to wait for him to acknowledge my pain or my humanness, and my goodness, I don’t have to wait for the man who will be the one for me. And my way of showing up for myself is moving my body. By stepping onto my Peloton, I commit to myself and my value. The pain is there, and I have no other option to accept that it’s there, for however long it will be there.

I’m just human, with a whole myriad of emotions, and it’s up to me to feel them all.