I remember the day when my heart died.

I remember the day when my heart died.
I was walking in the park. A dark hoodie, dark hair covering my face, dark umbrella to shade from a dull, gray fall rain. Headphones. Never leave you home without headphones.
A carpet of wet leaves under my feet. A tart smell of October in my nostrils. “Bauhaus” mumbling in my head.
I was not listening. I was thinking, walking no matter where. Just me, the rain, and the music.
And then it happened.
A moment before, a live fire had been beating in my breath. A moment before, I had been full of strength. Then, suddenly, there was nothing. A steady clot of darkness. Cold emptiness. Death.
What had happened? I understood something. One always realizes the most important things in their life by themselves. You might read books, listen to experienced people, catch ideas as they are vibrating in the air around you. It does not change anything. It does not change you. First, your self changes. Then, you understand.
And I understood. I realized that I had lived in lies. I had betrayed myself. I sold my soul for what I had mistaken for love.
Every woman has such a story. I have, too. What might be more boring than a recall of a nineteen-years-old girl relationships?
But the heart’s death is another case. It is interesting. Unusual. I remember all my feelings, in every detail. I remember standing there, in the rain, listening to a sudden emptiness inside. My self was falling apart like petals of a withering rose. It was like a fall into an endless pit.
A come-down is a fast thing. Climbing takes time. The next few weeks, maybe even months, I lived with a huge hole inside. I had torn out the crooked pseudolove, but nothing took its place.
And I remember how I realized I was alive again. That was when I found out that I could cry again. Tears are water flowing in a live heart. You cannot cry if you’re empty inside. When I realized that, I cried even more.
The heart is a phoenix. It burns, it dies, it revives.