Listen! There’s Nothing Funny About Heartbreaks

The stories about heartbreaks, on social media, are funny. But they shouldn’t be. Often, we talk about cheats. People who will beg you to love them, warm their way into your heart and when you get comfortable, they’ll drive a knife through it, turning it left, right, left again, in and out until the heart shatters and bleeds. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But, see, heartbreaks hurt!

After the Twitter thread where people shared how they met their partners went viral, someone started another thread: come tell us about the time someone (your ex) showed you shege. And, boy! Many of the tweets were tragic.

Some were in a relationship with people who did not get the memo (as in, you’re dating them but they are not dating you). Some were in a relationship with cheats and found out after a lot of FBI-like investigation. A lady shared how she pretended to have poisoned her ex in a bid to get him to confess that he was married with children. And many shared how they only got to know their partners got married over the weekend from photos and videos on social media. Or is it the ones that friends and family welcome with open arms while knowing that their ward/friend is only in the relationship for the ride?

Conversations around heartbreaks are fun – we even have cute names and phrases for them: chop breakfast, o gbe e ni handicap, demons, fear women, men are scum – until they aren’t. Surely, at some point, we’ve got to realise that we are talking about actual people and their hearts – you know, the one that beats hard and pumps blood; the one that could have short-term muscle failure due to heartbreaks. We’re talking about people who feel, bleed and hurt.

As we all know, when you’re in the throes of heartbreak, you want to do things you’ll probably regret later, but at the same time another part of you is trying to keep a lid on it.

As social media glides from one conversation into another, the intensity and gravity of the issue of heartbreaks get watered down. Perhaps at the root of these jokes is the fear of looking too hurt and weak, an admittance that someone had this grip over you, or that you were a mumu in the relationship – someone who was dumb enough to not see the red flags quickly. You know how something hurts you and you laugh about it to convince yourself it isn’t that deep? But it is. Heartbreaks are horrible and cut so terribly. Not that I would know, ha!

Some people describe it as a dull ache, others as piercing, while still others experience it as a crushing sensation. The pain can last for a few seconds and then subside, or it can be chronic, hanging over your days and depleting you…

We talk of heartbreak as though it is something naughty someone did – like the impertinent act of a mischievous child. But when you think of it on a deeper level, you realise it is mostly a calculated act of ruining someone’s peace of mind, getting your fill of the person and tossing them away like rags. Telling someone you love and ache for them, convincing them to go on this journey together, give you their heart, love and body, and then turning around to get married to another person is cruel. It is not you being smart, it is not you simply being a chop-and-go. It is you creating a horrific memory for another person, one they will be forced to live with for the rest of their lives. And no, it is not in the least comical.

It is important to gbera, shake body and move on, but more important is for us to not subconsciously build a culture where this pain is trivialised and where people rotten away inside while heartbreaks are packaged in cute little boxes.

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Feature Image: Dreamstime