The Other Side of Heartbreak: Finding Yourself After Loss

In her seminal memoir on grief, American author Joan Didion writes that “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” Didion’s point, taken from The Year of Magical Thinking, is not only that life can fracture instantly, but that it often happens in the most ordinary moments.

My life changed on an ordinary Friday afternoon in November. The weather was warm and I was working from home when my fiancé returned from the office early and told me he was leaving me. Our wedding was booked (and paid for) and the save-the-dates were out. The weekend prior, I’d gone to a wedding dress fitting and told him that I’d found ‘the one’. Now here he was, in one ordinary instant, sitting across from me in our bedroom and telling me “he couldn’t do it any more.” He left on a one-way flight to his home town that weekend. One day he was there and then he wasn’t; the future I dreamed of was one I no longer had.

Grief like that feels impossible to endure. I spent summer afternoons crying on the beach. I cried on the Pilates reformer and on long walks around the bay. A barista at my local cafe asked me whether it was “only the one coffee today?” and I burst into tears that were so uncontrollable she had to walk me home. One day, exhausted, I crawled up the living room stairs. Christmas – my favourite holiday – took on a burdensome quality. Sleep became a stranger. I forgot to eat. Anyone who has lost somebody, to death or otherwise, will understand the ways in which grief is all-consuming. It takes a toll on the physical body and the mind.

At the same time, there were tasks that had to be completed. I informed my family and friends, called off the wedding and let our landlord know he had moved out. I told our celebrant – his friend – that we wouldn’t require his services that day, or any day, because it turns out he didn’t want to marry me at all. Neighbours stopped me in the street and I had to tell them too. People asked: did I see it coming? But days before, my fiancé had held my hand and told me how excited he was to marry me. How was I to know?

“Heartbreak is the fastest way to resilience, but part of that resilience comes from realising that grief is meant to be shared.”

"One of the most painful experiences that a human being can suffer is to lose a life partner,” writes author Helen Fisher in Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray. Studies have shown that heartbreak shares all the hallmarks of traditional loss and grief. In his landmark TED Talk on how to fix a broken heart, psychologist Guy Winch refers to heartbreak as “a complex psychological injury” that can cause insomnia, intrusive thoughts and even immune system dysfunction. “Another consequence of heartbreak is that feeling alone and in pain can significantly impair our intellectual functioning,” Winch says. “It temporarily lowers our IQ. It impacts us in a multitude of ways.” I realised that heartbreak carries its own kind of grief – and I was in this for the long haul.

I filled the emptiness as best I could. I saw girlfriends. I made playlists. I went to therapy. I joined a book club. I cleaned out the home office. I hung shelves. I swam in the ocean. I learned to meditate. I borrowed a drill, discovered which evening was bin night and redecorated the bedroom so it felt like mine again. Above all, I endured people telling me, “It will be the best thing that’s ever happened to you.” Couldn’t they see that life as I knew it was over? No amount of reassurance could fix that.

It turns out that’s the point. After a breakup like this, your old life is over – but waiting on the other side is a new reality, one that turns out to be better than you ever could have imagined. With time, I started to feel the heartbreak lift and when I looked through the fog, I realised they were right: somehow, life was better. Friendships had strengthened, I’d cultivated a greater self awareness and my priorities had sharpened. I became closer to my family. I didn’t realise how much stress I’d been carrying in the relationship until it fell away. I learned to feel confident moving around the world without a buffer – I read books at the bar, solo. I travelled overseas alone and I made restaurant reservations for one. I learned what I truly liked and disliked now that I was no longer factoring in someone else’s preferences. I moved to London, something I had always dreamed of doing but had never thought possible (my ex didn’t like cold weather). I worked out how to cheer myself up on my darkest days and perhaps even more importantly, I learned I could always rely on myself, and that was enough.

There’s a quote by American author and essayist Cheryl Strayed that comes close to capturing the feeling of arriving on the other side of grief. “You let time pass,” she writes. “That’s the cure. You survive the days. You float like a rabid ghost through the weeks. You cry and wallow and lament and scratch your way back up through the months. And then one day, you find yourself alone on a bench in the sun and you close your eyes and lean your head back and you realise: you’re okay.”

Heartbreak is the fastest way to resilience, but part of that resilience comes from realising that grief is meant to be shared – and from seeing just how many people are right there, willing to lighten the load. Love arrives as unexpectedly as it leaves, and in so many other forms. I don’t know what’s coming next, but I’ve realised none of us do. All I know for sure is this: I understand myself more than I ever have before, and that’s all I need, for now.




This story was originally published in VEIL Issue Two. Discover this story, along with many more inspiring stories, weddings, and editorials in the full issue. Purchase your copy here.