26
votes
What broke your heart?
A break up
A loss
A blindside
A disappointment
Or anything else that broke your heart
Tell us the story, and how you are doing with it.
Also, for anyone reading people’s comments, remember that these are difficult stories for people to share. Please be empathetic and kind in your responses. Treat these as opportunities to commiserate and support, rather than as problems to solve.
Watching my country slide inexorably to authoritarianism/fascism and feeling powerless to affect any real change in any meaningful time frame.
I live in a super rural town with a big retirement village. Trump flags, signs in yards etc. Exactly what you would think of as prime Trump territory.
Today I was driving and I saw like 10 or so older folks (like in their 80's and 90's) at the town intersection with anti-trump signs and other hand-drawn protest signs actually protesting. Epstein signs, Anti-fascism signs - the works.
Don't give up. You can still be a proud American.
I still have some hope, but I'm also still heartbroken.
And to be honest, I think we're on the slippery slope now and we'll only stop when we hit the bottom, whatever that is. Until then we won't be building much of anything, just trying to keep together whatever we can on the way down.
There have been many places around the world across history that started with far less who faught/ are fighting harder for democracy. Don't give up yet.
I'm not American, but I clearly remember the likes of Josh Hawley and Nancy Pelosi, both sides of the aisle boasting about caring for Hong Kongers, and then where we're at now, with some still wilfully delulu that Trump will not only save America but HK and Taiwan as well.
But. It's important to remember that WWII went on for 6 years, and HK was under Imperial Japanese rule for 3 years and 8 months. Puerto Rico still isn't a full state. Indigenous nations in canada are still waiting for drinking water as promised for a hundred plus years. These things take time.
That's the most hopeful thing I've read in many months. I have no way of knowing how the "heartland" is doing: either this kind of quiet disillusionment isn't reported, or else I can't bring myself to believe off reports of it because it's just biased "copium". I hope the people supporting this regime are awakening.
There are a couple of things that still keep me hopeful. First, is the inalienable quality of fascism that it doesn't value honesty or expertise but rather aesthetics and loyalty. This means that those in power are not the smartest most capable people and will be prone to make mistakes, sadly probably catastrophic ones. But I doubt any fascist government can survive a financial crisis level event. Second, Americans as a culture tend to be spoiled, impatient, and fickle. If the stock market stops chugging along, inflation keeps going up, or maybe we even see violent abuses of (let's be honest here ... white) children or women by ICE thugs, we will see meaningful resistance, even from parts of the right. But yeah, we have at least 5-10 horrendous years coming up.
I don't know if you mean America, but the day I realized that the story I had been told all my life about what America is and what it stands for is only true for certain kinds of people... that broke my heart.
Yes I meant the good ol' USA. And yes, 100% about the "story" of America. I ate that propaganda a lot harder than I realized.
What kills me even more is that those certain kinds of people, at best, really have no idea that the world that treats them so well could treat someone else so poorly.
Yeah, I was one of those people until about 8 years ago!
Because it's relevant for the topic of parents/ young people / pipeline / how to get out, want to briefly share what changed for you?
Sure, I'll take a shot.
I grew up in a small town in East Texas, which I sometimes describe as: everything Jeff Foxworthy does in his "you might be a redneck if" comedy routine is unironically true about my hometown.
Perhaps it will not surprise you, dear reader, to learn that East Texas was (and is) a hotbed of racism, sexism, and white privilege.
Here's an example: there's another small town nearby called Lakeport. Everybody knows that if you speed, even five over, in Lakeport, you'll get a ticket. And if you're Black, you could be going under the speed limit, and you'll get a ticket. This was a fact that people would talk about like you'd talk about the weather. Just the way things are. A high school classmate once told me that he went hunting with the Grand Wizard of the area KKK (keep in mind this was like 1996).
These things made me uncomfortable somewhere deep down, but I didn't know why they made me uncomfortable. I've come to realize that I lacked the vocabulary to talk about these problems.
After George Floyd was murdered, a group of people in the office started a biweekly group to work through some courses on bias, the history of racism, and other similar topics. During one of those sessions, we were talking about privilege, and someone recommended Robin D'Angelo's White Fragility. So bought it and read it, then read it again.
There were so many patterns of behavior talked about in the book that were like an "Aha" moment for me. It helped me understand that the overt, name calling kind of racism is not the only kind of racism and the ways that racism had gone underground but continued to thrive.
Those patterns gave me a framework to reexamine those experiences from my childhood and understand with more empathy how those things must have felt to people of color.
As I started to read and listen more, and as I started to integrate more, I discovered some other new things. Seth Meyers put one of his Black writers (Amber Ruffin) in front of the camera to talk about racism and her own experience. I was quite shocked to find out that not everyone trusts the police or sees them as a force for good.
Given my earlier example, where people talk about racist policing in the same tone of voice they use to talk about the weather, maybe you can begin to see how deep and pervasive the patterns of bias run. It's not like I didn't know, but I didn't have the imagination to take the next step and think about how it would feel to be Black and see everyone talking openly about racist policing, but nobody doing anything about it, or even acting like it's a problem.
I should say also, it's not only about race. I had a similar journey learning about sexism and patriarchy. A lot of that was reevaluating my sister's experience, and reframing some of the ways she was treated (and even how I treated her sometimes). Being a stay at home dad also widened my perspective. A lot of it is also tied up in my experience Evangelical Christianity, but that's a whole other post (or ten).
Those biases run deep, so a lot of the work of the past years has been about popping the bubble of my privilege and trying to learn more about other peoples' experience of the world. I don't read much nonfiction, but I started really focusing on reading fiction by women, people of color, LGBTQ authors, international authors, etc. I started paying more attention to how people treated women at work, and talking to women and people of color about their experiences.
I expect it to be a lifelong journey to increase my knowledge, understanding, and empathy.
Thank you for sharing this. It sounds like it was hard work that wasn't always comfortable, and it's inspiring that you see it as a continuing journey instead of "and how I'm woke and done".
I grew up in fairly different circumstances, and experienced some racism/discrimination, but I actually didn't see the flip side privilege until much later in life. I hope to continue learning as well, if only to immunize against turning hateful + conservative in old age.
This is one of my fears. I doubt these people set out to be hateful.
I hope guarding against it and surrounding myself with people who I trust with the kind of values that I value will both help. It is all I can really do.
And will staunchly refuse to believe it when told. I'd like to believe the ability to accept new information and change isn't equally innate to everyone. That perhaps it isn't their fault. (But I still blame them when I feel angry)
I honestly didn’t get it until a lucky shrooms trip years ago and that was only because I already spend a lot of time wondering why I’m so successful even though I’m not particularly good at anything.
That phrase was from my trip.
How can the world treat some people so poorly when it treats me so well?
Because for a moment I finally saw what it felt like for the entire world to give you zero chances, zero slack, no excuses and no love.
Its not that I didn’t work for what I have, its not even just because my parents are educated and reasonably wealthy, its because I got caught, multiple times, with weed in high school and all I got was a slap on the wrist and the black kid next to me got fucking arrested. On the outside it looks like his fault, but once you know where he came from, reacting like an angry trapped animal was literally his instinct in the same way that my instinct was to sit there and fawn like a baby animal cause thats what keeps me safe and thats whats kept him safe and its not fair that no one sees that but us. The whole entire world really is just against him and theres not much I can do about it besides understand and try to grab up everyone I can and love them too.
Shrooms are great.
The for profit facility that I was locked up in as a young teenager is still open to this day. Albeit another company owns it and it goes under a different name, they run essentially the same program. On average 100 thousand children are annually kept imprisoned in the troubled teen industry in full, the facility I was kept at being only one among many.
Have you read that Elan comic? He published it in a book recently. Crazy stuff.
It really resonated with me that he basically survived because of the fire burning inside of him.
Elan.School
It's heavy, but the artist survived.
Oh I read Elan school, without the knowledge that it was actually real, I couldn't believe it when I found out. We don't really have this so-called industry in the UK - leastways I don't think we do - unimaginable to me.
I think about that persons troubles and what they went through and wrote about from time to time.
UK has a long history of boarding schools though, so maybe not for troubled teens, but for everybody, I hope they have good checks on them.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/children-scottish-boarding-houses-perthshire-b2507426.html
https://www.newsweek.com/britain-elite-boarding-schools-facing-explosion-abuse-allegations-267201
Yeah, I know of boarding schools for sure, though I tend to associate them with money, status and bullying rather than for correction. Of course, we also had Borstals back when I was younger too (and approved schools from before I was born), which possibly more strongly resembled these, but the Borstal system was abolished in 1982.
I remember as kids being told not to be naughty or we'd be sent to borstal. I can't remember if it affected our behaviour at all though - maybe it did - I never went to borstal.
Yeah, I have a hard copy finally coming in the mail sometime in September. Joe nobody is a true inspiration. Because of his work, I'm currently working on a concept album about the facility I was at. My band has gratefully been very supportive of this next endeavor.
Paris Hilton was also imprisoned in one such called Provo Canyon, apparently.
I'm glad you made it.
That's very upsetting to hear the company is still running something like it, but I hope you can take some solace in hearing about the "troubled teen industry" overall in decline. According to the wiki article, a number of them have closed down in recent years, which I hope stops investments into more. There's a report today about the Canadian Venture controversies, in fact. Many of you made it, told your stories, are believed, and it is proving to be the best hope for the next generation.
Paris Hilton is a fucking hero. I never thought I would think that, but what she has done to give public platform to the voices of us survivors is incredible. I'm very grateful for all she has done.
In the late 90s and early 2000s we lived in a low cost apartment complex. There was a family with three young kids living a few doors down from us. The oldest kid was a few years younger than me, I think he was in the 5th grade and I was in the 8th grade when this incident took place.
The family was kind of rough, the parents fought frequently, the kids were always dirty, things like that.
One day the police showed up with social services and picked up the kids.
Apparently the oldest of the kids was taking care of his two young siblings. The parents had abandoned them and might have been arrested and in jail. And the rental office finally sent the police to evict them because the rent hasn't been paid in six or seven months. The kids at the time had been on their own during those six ir seven months. Poor kid had fed his siblings by getting food from the grocery store dumpster.
This happened in 1999 or 2000. I am now a 39 year old man and It still breaks my heart thinking about that kid having to take care of two other kids when he himself was still a kid too.
That reminds me of the book There Are No Children Here. It’s about a family living in the Henry Horner complex in Chicago.
With apologies in advance for depressing everyone who reads it, my most recent heartbreak is spoiler-boxed below. The tl;dr warning is that I spend a lot of time working in cancer centers.
This shattered me like a glass dropped on concrete
I was working at a brand-new pediatric cancer center.
A girl who looked to be about 5 years old was trailing down the hall behind her adult guardian.
I first noticed her from behind, and the clinical parts of my brain were idly picking up the 8-inch recently healed scar from C4 up the back of her skull, the spraddle-legged gait with one leg clearly lagging the other, arms slightly outstretched for balance. The luminous pallor of severe anemia. Underweight and frailty. Bald as a polished egg. I could make some educated guesses about her diagnosis and brief life expectancy, even with the best current medicine.
What broke me is that I saw her face in passing. She was smiling. A big grin, but pinched at the corners, under deeply shadowed eyes.
At that age, it's not a fake smile pasted on to hide pain and exhaustion. It expressed everything she was feeling, a mix which included joy, agony, fatigue, love, hope, terror, all the colors in the emotional paintbox at once.
It struck me so hard that it was like the electric moment where you're falling and you know it before the ground leaps up and hits you. I think my heart literally stopped for a second. It was all I could do to get to the bathroom before I started sobbing.
I don't know if it's me, or I was unusually vulnerable, or if anyone else would have had this reaction. If I could present a single image as evidence for "Why There Is No God, Or No God Worth Worshipping", that little girl's face was the picture. And I'm a life-long atheist.
I'm in tears just writing this. For all the world's miseries, which are myriad and often human-caused, this random instance of natural disaster afflicting a single life ripped open my battered and scarred and buried empathy in a way I'm still trying to cope with.
Also worked in healthcare, peds always gets me too.
Treated a boy with cerebral palsy who would stop eating about once or twice a year because he felt like a burden to his family.
They’d have him admitted, we would force feed him with a tube, and send him home.
His family was desperately poor. Lived in a trailer that leaked when it rained. Hardly any floor because the original linoleum was like 40 years old. The most expensive thing in that entire shack of a living space was this kids hospice bed.
His mother loved him so much. I wish I could have convinced him to just live for her. It would have been okay. He could have learned about computers and gotten some desk job and had a whole life if I could have just gotten him to believe that you really can subsist entirely on someones love, that it is enough.
There's biological evils, of which @patience_limited wrote about. And then there is this, human evil, in which your story probably happened in a rather wealthy country where the top quartile cant even imagine what going hungry means, let alone the determination to starve oneself out of poverty.
Back when my sister and I still lived with our mother, we once had a Rottweiler called Spike. We lived in a big house, and he did provide some protection. We had to leave that house in a hurry due to tragic circumstances, and Spike was not a good fit for an apartment. I gave him to a friend from college. It was, well, heartbreaking. Some time afterwards, I went to visit. My (his) dog was thin and clearly malnourished and depressed. Spike stayed near me the whole time. I can't even put into words how painful that was. I gave dog food for a while, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn't take him home. Spike died a few months
agolater, and it was honestly a relief. He was alone most of the time. He was not used to it. It still hurts.Damn I hope you aren’t friends with them any more. What kind of person neglects any dog, much less their friends dog. I’m angry for you.
I'm so sad and sorry to hear this Lou. I had a similar experience but I was much younger. I was reliant on my parent to find a home for the dog in a very short time frame. He was beautiful and of a very adoptable breed but I don't know what happened or where he ended up.
I've had a few heartbreaks over relationships before but one sticks with me as being special.
When I was around 23 I matched with a girl on one of the apps and we hit it off. We talked all day every day and she was amazing. She lived in the next major city over and for various reasons at the time we couldn't meet immediately. We moved off the apps and started calling and video calling. Something about this girl had me really falling for her and I felt we had a real, genuine connection.
In hindsight I look back now and realize we never talked about it, I just kept this all to myself, very mature!
Anyway, we finally arranged to meet and she admitted that she was nervous and it was her first real date. I met her and we spent hours together, moved to various venues, I walked her home. No kiss though but I was really happy. We'd even arranged the next date at the end.
On the way back I was glowing over the success, thinking how it was probably the start of a good relationship and I got this massive text.
She said it wasn't going to work, she said the whole date she was uncomfortable and didn't have a good time. She felt pressured into coming along and agreeing to the follow up date and she was sorry but she could not see us working romantically. As a friend she said she wanted to keep talking, but that was it.
I was crushed. I didn't get that vibe at all. I couldn't understand or process it. I think I texted back to make sure she was sure and she said yes and I just cried on the whole trip home.
It was so immediately crushing, I've not felt that crash to feelings before or since.
I had to cut ties with her because when you feel like that about someone and they don't about you, it's extremely unhealthy.
I admit that was at a time of emotional immaturity for me, and I think she was also really bad at it too, as much as we seemed to get on as friends.
Always be open with your feelings and expect the same from your partner!
My most recent heartbreak was this year, the day after my mothers memorial service I met up with a close person (who also new my mother well) for breakfast before she had to catch her flight back to her country.
She just said, in passing, that my mother always talked to her about how she was really proud of me, for the choices I've made and how good a parent I am.
I just broke down, crying my heart out, right there at the coffee shop, no protections kicking in at all, completely caught by surprise and heart broken. I spent most of the following month just crying about it (not really true, but it was almost the only emotional thing I had space for, because it is so huge).
What really broke me, and still does when I think about this is how hard my mothers life was when you can't communicate to your own child that you love them and are proud of them, really, really heartbreaking for me.
Since then, I have been extra attentive of myself to remember to tell the people I care about that I care about them, regardless of how akward it feels. I don't succeed all the time, but sometimes!
About 10 years ago, I got what I considered at the time to be a very swanky internship for a very large company on the opposite side of the country. I landed it by "hustling", aka contacting people on LinkedIn, asking for informational interviews, and working my way into conversations with executives at companies I knew would be offering internships. I’ve never been the smartest or most talented person in school. In fact,I was doing the bare minimum in graduate school to get my diploma but I still managed to beat out Ivy League candidates. I felt proud and “savvy.”
Part of the deal was free summer housing downtown in a major West Coast city. I packed my gaming computer, fancy electronics, and other fun things into my car, drove across the country, moved in, started work, and was having a great time.
One of the perks of the housing was free maid service. I was never there when they cleaned, but one day I was. The people who came in were a mother and her teenage daughter. The daughter helped her mom with the cleaning and translated from English to Spanish.
That was my first clear awareness of undocumented immigrants doing under-the-table work to survive. It broke my heart. I was a nobody who had gotten more free passes for ineptitude and laziness than I deserved, enjoying a job and free housing, while indirectly benefiting from a system that exploited people working far harder than I ever had.
It was a sharp, unshakable lesson in privilege. I had every advantage handed to me. Luck, timing, connections, and the benefit of the doubt have always been stacked in my favor, and still to this day. They had none of that, yet still showed up to do exhausting, invisible labor for people like me. I hope they were paid well and found stability. Seeing the state of things now, I doubt it. Our country rarely rewards their effort, and too often devalues their humanity. Knowing that my comfort existed alongside their struggle is something I still carry, and it still breaks my heart. And I really wish that instead of hate filling our hearts, it could be replaced with shame AND compassion, so that we have both awareness of what we can do better for each other and the room to do it.
When my closest family all voted to take away the rights of me and their grandchildren, all for some racist endeavour. I'll never truly forgive them for voting against my best interests, and they knew it too. I'm a grown ass adult, and they even said to me that they knew I wouldn't like it but they know best.
Naomie.
Played on the same server on Trackmania towards the end of 2008, maybe beginning of 2009. I was 15 at the time and she was 33. It was probably grooming although it's still difficult to admit as much, and I don't think I have any real argument that it wasn't except to say it didn't feel like it but maybe that's still some kind of denial. And I was a hormonal teen so how would I even know, even looking back at it now as a grown adult. Anyway it didn't take very long before I fell in love with her. A cool South African adult woman that actually wanted to befriend angsty teenage me.
We would text and talk for hours most days, even outside of the game. I have some real nostalgia for MSN Messenger mostly because of her. Ended up even getting webcams so we could video chat. She was beautiful. She would help me with whatever issues I struggled with at the time and talk it out with me, and while I obviously couldn't help with hers, I would still listen as she shared all sorts of truly traumatic shit that had happened to her, including horryfying things when she was a small child. She also hid this friendship (or whatever you can call it at all) from her husband which in retrospect is of course a major red flag but he was abusive, so maybe she didn't tell him about any of her friends, whether or not they were adults.
Texting, chatting, voice, video, continued until the end of 2010. Tthings started to fall apart when she was arranging a trip to visit her family in England. Because obviously, I thought that it was close enough to me that we would be able to meet up physically. She was not into that idea though. So I believe that that's the point she began withdrawing. I was getting my heart broken obviously but she hadn't fully ghosted me yet, but I would get so upset because of how long it took between her replies. One time, I called her from the house phone when I thought she was ignoring me. I don't remember the price per minute to call from Northern Europe to South Africa but it was absurd.
Things fully ended not too long after that. I couldn't accept that she didn't want to meet up irl and I guess she couldn't accept that I was becoming so upset at her every time we spoke. Had her family to think of, her husband, her daughter, etc.. At the end it was only emails back and forth. I think it got cut off a bit before she flew to go to them, I can't fully recall anymore. But I do remember I isolated myself in my room for a month and didn't say a single word to my parents. Not too long ago they told me they were considering putting me in the psych ward and my reaction was to ask why they didn't.
So my heart was broken in a million pieces and I sunk into a deep depression. It took years to get over her and sometimes I feel like seeing as it happened in such formative years, I still have trauma or a lot of weight from it. Thought about her every day for like 5+ years. Not every day anymore, but still a lot. Her social profiles are public and apparently she nearly died from covid a couple of years ago and my heart sunk. I know I shouldn't but I still miss her every time I think of her.
However.. the first thing I would say if I got the chance to speak to her again is to ask what the fuck she was thinking becoming so close with a teenager less than half her age. I'm getting near to the age she was during everything and I cannot for the life of me imagine having that kind of a relationship with someone that age. Like. What the fuck.
I have a friend who is schizophrenic and has cut off contact with me. I felt something break in me when it sank in that he wasn't going to talk to me again because we had been such good friends for years. We disagreed on so much but still would talk through things or just respect each other's boundaries. He was very understanding when I let him know I didn't have the time or mental energy to debate/discuss with him on political things after I had kids. Of course I was still there for him to vent when he needed to and tried to support him however I could.
He won't get help for his schizophrenia, and his delusions have focused in on a mutual friend whom he has spent the last year harassing online and doxing. He's now escalated to death threats against our friend. My mutual friend reached out to say goodbye in case anything happens, and I have this background fear that I'm going to get a message/call that he's attacked our mutual friend and one/both of them are either hurt or dead or someone else was hurt due to this.
I'm hoping something can be done for him, and that the upcoming court hearing has some lasting positive impact.
After reading some of the heart breaks here, it sure puts in perspective mine. I think I've had an easier life than many...
Anyways, my heart break is job related. I have been in retail most of my life. I started working with my current company's Operations team on the side. I completed various projects, was recognized as the Ops guy by peers, got excellent reviews, found purpose. Basically the best three years of my life professionally.
Finally, a remote role on the Operations team opens up. Technically a step down from my current role, but the pay range is good enough that I can make it work. More importantly, it will allow me to do Operations and project management and learn from some great people on the team. Basically the perfect job and I'm clearly the favourite for the job. I do great on the first two rounds of interviews and I'm scheduled for the next round. Before it happens, the internal recruiter reaches out. She needs to tell me that the pay range is actually lower than what we discussed. A lot lower. 51% lower than what I was currently making at the highest, and I probably won't get the highest. No negotiation. Changed due to the market I live in, which was bullshit. Whatever, I run the numbers. See if my wife would be willing to look for a job, basically anything I can do to make it work. No choice, I can't make the finances work. I turned down the job I worked so hard to get. I was heartbroken.
I'm still in retail. Probably will be the rest of my life. Is what it is I guess.
Environmental Destruction
Pufflings (Baby puffins) starving to death with a belly full of plastic their parents tried desperately to provide. (Source 2023 CBC - warning dead pufflings - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/puffin-starvation-threat-climate-change-1.6978773)
politics
My country (Canada), under new PM Mark Carney, is going to "market forces" us out of environmental crisis apparently. The second place winner would also ignore issues and rubber stamp industry projects while doing austerity. Third and fourth place will never win because Justin Trudeau et al don't want electoral reform for representational democracy.I have very few tears to shed over humanity these days. But I'm happy to report that on a personal level, my previously broken heart have indeed healed with time: romantically; my mom dying in 2018; brief foray into the infertility world; a good friend not inviting me to their wedding.