husha, husha, we all fall down...

You know how sometimes life is going along swimmingly - your job's OK, your home situation is good, maybe there's that special someone to be with in the evenings, there's food on the table, and to top it all off you're in a state of grace - and then suddenly the bottom falls out of this bucket called your life and before you know it all of the above are obsolete (except the food thing, and somehow you've lost your appetite) and you're swirling away down into some sort of unknown, rushing, and rather terrifying black hole? Well maybe you don't, but it happens. And when it does, wowee - life's a bitch of the first water.
Let's elaborate on the whole heart issue. It's not bad enough that you've just had to kiss (metaphorically) goodbye to the person you'd love to settle down and raise a lot of odd and interesting kids with, and grow old with, and laugh your a** off with, but when you're down there and turned into a sobbing wet heap on your bed, you're at the same time acutely conscious of that fact that you need to blow your nose, and that you look ridiculous, and that the sound of blowing one's nose is undignified in the extreme, and couldn't you at least have a little dignity at least, at the moment. But no. And everything hurts so badly you wish somebody would walk by and casually slash your shoulder with a sharpish kitchen knife so that at least there'd be some physical pain to distract you, because right now the emotional pain is so overwhelming you simply don't know what to do with yourself and you feel like you're going to explode like one of those fish that live only in the deepest trenches on the ocean floor and burst in a brilliant show of shattered fins, intestines, and scales if you try to bring them to the surface. And then you realize that you're comparing yourself to an exploding fish and you almost crack a smile and WAIT, THIS IS MY HEART WE'RE TALKING ABOUT. AND IT HURTS. BAD. The worst thing is not being able to do a damn thing about it. You can't slap a bandage on it, or take an advil, and you've got too much sense to go out and get drunk or slash your wrists or starve yourself until someone notices your pain and comes running up to look after you. No no, you go blow your nose and wash your face and throw up and have one drink and try not to think about the whole thing because if you do you'll start crying again and crying gives you a nasty headache and makes you look like a rotting turnip with hair and so you lie in bed at nights reading Dorothy Sayers to keep your mind off things until you fall asleep with the book in your hand. Wake up, rinse, repeat.

And then, slowly, you start to get better.