Heartbreak. Moby wrote a song about it, we’ve all felt it; that Ralph Wiggum moment when you literally feel as though your heart is ripping in half.
But if our heart is just a simple organ pumping blood around our bodies why do we have such emotional affinity to it? If the brain is where all this emotional turmoil is taking place – why do figurative terms like broken heart, feel so apt. So real.
I’ve been thinking about the times I’ve felt my heart break. There was a time post big breakup; I sat collapsed in a door frame, my hands and knees pressed tightly against my chest, spouting tears that for a moment dissolved my self-confidence. I felt this ball/foetal position quelled my aching heart. Or maybe it was the gin I was drinking straight from the bottle, no ice. I sat there for a while after, crying – wailing rather, so loud my gay neighbours popped their heads over to check I wasn’t dying. Then, I began the long process of nursing my heart in pieces back to health.
Recently, I had some shocking news at work, my hands immediately moved to my chest and started clutching at my heart. As though they were trying to calm it, soothe it. There are other days my heart feels heavy, and conversely days it feels so happy it might burst. But it always feels – it’s more than blood and tissue.
Medically speaking this makes no sense.
Or does it?
I listened to my favourite Stuff You Should Know Podcast: Can you die of a broken heart? And there seems to be some correlation, some proof that a brain suffering from a broken heart in a metaphorical sense, could injure your heart in a biological sense.
It’s called Broken Heart Syndrome or Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy, of course it was discovered by the crazy Japanese who named it after an octopus trap. Basically, they found individuals who were super healthy and had no reason to have heart attacks, were having heart attack like symptoms after experiencing great spells of grief.
Furthermore, a Finnish study found people in long term relationships – who suffered the unexpected death of their partner (via car accident for example) had a 50% chance of dying in the first week after that event. Their hearts were so broken they couldn’t go on.
That mortality rate kind of scares the shit out of me. Are our hearts that fragile? Could my heart handle loosing someone?
I look back on those moments and I swear I felt real physical pain in my heart. Maybe it was in my head, maybe it was in my heart. But I got through it. My heart kept going. And the aforementioned sufferers of Tako-whatever all made speedy recoveries – that’s comforting. It could just be that initial shock, which your heart, like every other part of you is trying to process.
Listen to your heart, follow your heart, the heart wants what it wants (thanks Selena Gomez) – it’s interesting how much emphasis we put on this one organ.
Maybe the science isn’t watertight, maybe the connection is slightly inexplicable, but it’s undeniable our heart is more than a boom tiss, boom tiss, rythym.
Shit, I wonder how many times I’ve written heart in this post.