"He broke up with me Mr. V!" she cried with all the emotion of someone who had been on the receiving end of utter tragedy. She then proceeded between sobs to tell me how much she REALLY loved him, and how he, in all of his 13 year old wisdom, said he needed to end it because he "needed his space." How could he do this to her? She had given him the best weeks of her life! I was struggling a bit not to laugh or minimize her heart break, because I knew, that although I have a lifetime of experience that tells me that she is going to someday learn true tragedy and go through suffering of consequence, and how her 12 year old life was NOT really over, I had to understand that she only had the filter of her youth and inexperience with which to compare and measure her suffering and, for her, this pain and suffering and heartbreak were real, and there was going to be no "Oh grow up and get over it" that was going to be effective.
So I reassured her that any guy that would hold her and her feelings in such low regard was not worthy of her, and tried to explain to her that, at her age, she needed to be working on being the best HER that she could be and love herself and get to know herself and God before she went around giving away anything as precious and priceless as her heart. I guess I tried to treat her the way I would hope someone would treat my daughter, if they were someone she trusted and saw her heartbroken over something.
I was thinking about her the rest of the afternoon; about how a chapter of her life was now written... it was in the books. First Broken Heart? Check. I was struck by the idea that she will never be the same again. Oh, she will be happy, she will have happy days, she will love again, and hopefully someday with some wisdom to go with the emotion, she will even push this experience our of her mind and not really think about it, unless drawn to by a person or a circumstance... but no matter how far removed she is from the pain and from the memory, she CANNOT go back to the innocence of pre-heartbreak.
It made me think of one of my favorite poems by Robert Frost, quoted by S.E. Hinton in The Outsiders:
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
We all have experiences that mark us. Pain, sorrow, heartbreak, consequences from mistakes or poor choices... things that have marked our lives forever. The gold of innocence, the perfection of Eden, the BEST DAY EVER, the most amazing or romantic or fun, or WHATEVER experience it all comes to an end.
Depressing huh? Not the kind of uplifting brainstorm that you were expecting? Be patient... I'm being intentional.
My students experience led me to think about my first love. You see I am married to my very best friend. She is the love of my life, my soul mate, my partner, my biggest fan, my strongest advocate... I could go on and on. That being said, all it takes is the right song to play on the radio or the scent of the right perfume and my mind can in an instant say "Oh, that's the perfume so and so used to wear" or "Hey. that was our song, I haven't heard that in like forever." Does that show infidelity on my part or longing? Not at all. It simply means that there are sensory memories that are forever tied to this experience in my life, and my brain recalls the memory when presented with the sensory trigger. The same thing happens when I walk into a place and smell the aroma of certain foods... it can trigger the memory of my grandmother's cooking, or my aunt's pastelon, or the smell of curry goat that brings me back to pot luck meals at the Hispanic-Guyanese Church of my childhood.
Anyway, the point is that the relationship of which I speak, ended REALLY badly. My heart was broken and at the time, you could not convince me that "All things come together for good." But that heartbreak shaped me, that relationship taught me much about myself and what I wanted and what I deserved from life and from love, so that when the love of my life came into my life, I was ready to appreciate just what a treasure I had found. I don't cherish the heartbreak, but given the chance, I wouldn't go back and change it, because it prepared me for so many of the blessings I would not otherwise have today.
The reality is that once innocence is lost, once certain things are experienced, they cannot be undone, we cannot go back to who we were before. Even if we find forgiveness, joy, salvation, redemption, grace, mercy many times we still have to deal with the consequences of the abuse, the pain, the decision. Children can't be unborn, youth can't be regained, money can't be remade (you can reestablish yourself, be even better richer than you were before, but you won't get back the money you lost, that's gone, this is new money).
The secret is to see the gold while it is there. To be able to live every moment as if it were the most precious gift that we could receive, to know that I may not be able to turn back the clock, but I can make today the best today it can possibly be. I am going to cling to God, and to the things that ARE eternal and unchanging and perfect, and TRULY valuable and important and recognize that good experiences should be treasures and negative ones can be learned from.
As for my student? Yesterday, she came into my class bouncing off the walls with happiness. When I asked her what was up, she informed me that he had come to her that day and said that he had made a mistake, that he loved her and wanted her back. "What did you say?" I asked her. She laughed and said " I told him NO! I told him that he had missed his chance, and that if he couldn't appreciate me before, then he wasn't getting another chance to mess things up again." I smiled... maybe she HAD listened through the tears, or maybe she's just a vengeful type who could not pass up the chance to hurt him back. Either way, yesterday had faded into today, and she had used the experience to grow and be empowered... she was not as innocent as she was the day before, but she was wiser, and that wisdom would carry her to many bright, happy, gold tomorrows.
