rackers co

Along with the first hate mail I received a few weeks back (!!!) (you know you’re going places when people care enough to tell you how much they don’t like you), I also got my first advice-mail! I’m like a regular old Dear Dolly.
We’ll have to think up a name for an ‘advice column’, if you’d like. (You probably don’t like, I can sense the ‘shut up Racquel you are not a legitimate columnist‘ vibes from here). It needs to be cooler than ‘Dear Rackers’, or ‘Ask Rackers’. *TAKING SUGGESTIONS*

Following on from my ‘ideals‘ post, (from which I had some great reviews – yippee!) I had a friend ask me to dip my toe into talking about heartbreak.

Now, look, before you all throw on your fur coat, jump on your high horse, and proclaim ‘What would she know?!‘, I’ll have you know that I have dealt with heartbreak. Just not so much in the romantic sense.

(In the romantic sense, I’ve only ever really dealt with an overly bruised ego).

Heartbreak can sometimes be prolonged because of what I talked about in ‘ideals’ –

“But then your mind does this weird little trick – ‘let’s forget about all the things that were telling me that they were not for me!’, ‘Noooo remember all those good times!’, ‘What do you meeeean they hurt your feelings?’”

In particular, your mind fixates on ‘Noooo remember all those good times!’.

You paint a picture of how someone was so you can justify missing their presence and the way they made you feel.
Cue mind playing tricks, and you somehow only manage to remember the really, really good times – almost completely forgetting the gut-wrenching, heart-string-pulling, is-that-lump-in-my-throat-bile-or-did-I-somehow-swallow-glass? moments.

You got so used to picturing your future with them that you don’t know how to imagine it anymore.

You’re missing something.
There’s a piece of you that you just can’t find anymore.
It feels like a vital organ has been hastily removed from your body.

You’re just a little bit empty.

What I know of heartbreak comes through a piece I wrote at the age of nineteen, when my whole world was ripped out from under my feet.

have you ever missed someone
even before they were gone?
have you ever thought
I miss them so
only to think
but they are still here?

have you ever known it was the end
before the end even came?
have you ever watched the end
crashing down like a heavy weight on your heart,
right in front of your eyes?

the fight.
the battle.
the stress.
and hard enough to admit,
the relief.

there is no more pain.

but that is not true.

the pain never goes away –
it seeps into different beings
it’s disguised
a different pain.

a new pain.

You become accustomed to the pain, the heartache, the tears at 2am.
The lost feeling when you awaken, having just seen them in your dream.
The moment you realise that you can no longer hear their laugh on demand.

But I can tell you this –
That, although they will never, ever, be replaced – your heart is big enough to fit more people in, if you will allow it.
That, although you feel as if you are missing a vital organ, you are still breathing.

I will not compare the heartbreak that I have felt to the heartbreak you have felt.
And I hope for your own sanity, no one is saying ‘I know how you feel.’
But I will let you know,

You are not alone
in this world.