I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken — and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.

--Margaret Mitchell

Just about every week we get a question here on the depression site from someone who is going through a break up. Most of us can empathize because you usually don’t get through life without experiencing the loss of at least one romantic relationship. In a lot of cases depression can play a part in a break up. Sometimes the person who ends the relationship is depressed. In other cases both partners suffer from depression. And in most cases heartbreak and depression follow a break up. The questions people have after their partner has told them it is over include: “Should I wait for him?” or “If her depression is cured will she come back to love me again?” For those who finally accept the break up the question becomes “How do I cope with the pain?” In this post we are going to focus on the healing process following a break up, how to deal with grief and move forward.

For all the broken hearted people out there, I have a message for you. You are not alone and you can heal from this.

My Personal Experience

I was fifteen. He was sixteen. We met on the stairs of my high school. It was cold. He gave his jacket to me to keep warm. This began our relationship which lasted over seven years. We were going to get married. I even had an engagement ring. But I couldn’t go through with it. He was emotionally and psychologically abusive and the abuse was beginning to get physical. He was also addicted to drugs. I looked into the future and wept. The good times we shared and even the love could not make up for the way he treated me. One can only hope so many times that love will change things. I found out the hard way that in some relationships love is not enough.

Despite the fact that I was the one to end things my heart was still broken. I think it was when I went to our apartment to collect my things that the finality of it really sunk in. He had already gone and taken his stuff and the place was so quiet. I sat in a heap on the floor and cried. I was alone. There was no more “us.” It was like falling into a gaping hole of nothingness. I remember calling my eldest sister who had been through her share of break-ups. I asked her, “Why does this hurt so bad? I am the one who ended things.” She then relayed her experience of leaving an abusive partner. My sister confessed that she cried every night for months following her break-up. He was no good for her either but she still mourned the loss just the same. The heart is not logical. It just feels.

I can tell you that it took a lot of time to heal from my break up. It didn’t happen overnight and there was a lot of anguish in between. You will grieve. You may become depressed. But you also learn. You learn to trust in your strength and resilience to get through one of life’s greatest challenges, the loss of love.