The Writer’s Corner features poetry, essays, short stories, satire and various fiction and non-fiction from SCAD Atlanta students. To submit your own work for the Writer’s Corner, email features@scadconnector.com.
“A Basic Guide to Heartbreak” by Sarah Bradley
You are going to need to remain calm. This is the soldier’s calm, and it’s going to save you. It’s going to save you, because you were a fool in love, and it was love that made you lower your throat into a tiger’s open mouth. You will try to leave and he pulls out his .44, and you cease to be a person. He tries to make you a thing.
He hurts you. While it happens you think about how your mother tried to protect you. You think about the summer before your freshman year of high school. You think about a lot of things that will make you wonder how you forgot girls pay the price for foolishness.
You are going to need to get mad. You get mad, because you’ve always been smart enough not know to the odds. You don’t bet on the police. You don’t like the odds. I need you to get mad because no blood will be spilt over what’s happened to you. Get mad because everyone would rather pretend the world is just and kind, than do a damn thing to help you. So you get to work.
You make great grades at school. Your parents are proud. You work two jobs and spend the money on getting higher than any sane person should be. Good thing you’re not sane. You get praise from your professors. You bang boys you don’t care about because grunts and moans drown out the silence screaming from your heart.
Sometimes you find meek soft boys, and you hurt them. You never draw blood because you don’t have to. You hurt a man far worse by standing him up, or shutting them down. You hate yourself but can’t help it because now you’re the one with the machine gun, and they’re the one stuck in the mud. You feel the poison spilling out of your heart. You call a therapist.
You talk to the friends that love you dearly but you don’t believe them when they say you’ll get better.
You overachieve and dream in secret of burning the world down. You want success, because with success there’s a chance you’ll stop feeling this way. I’m going to need you to stop, and wake up. You need to wake up because you’re more than the ghosts you’re running from. You need to wake up because even though he took your past, he does not get to have your future. You need to become real again.
So you do the difficult things. You smile through the cobwebs on your heart. You let someone hold you when you cry. One happy song, one bad joke, one tiny glittering moment of triumph at a time, you will wake up. You remember you are a person, that living is beautiful. You’ll understand what better means. Promise.
