For me, one of the saddest heartbreaks is loving someone who is in love and already married to your best friend. Familiar? This is what happened to the guy who fell for a very happily married Natalie Portman in the movie, Love Actually.
Again and again, when I watch that movie, I cannot help but feel anguish. Especially on the part where he went to their (Natalie’s and her husband) house one romantic Christmas night and revealed his undying love for her using white boards/paper. T__T
It takes guts, lots and lots of tearful nights and self-control not to pounce on your friend and strangle him because he married the love of your life. I’m sure that the guy will ultimately find someone new, but for that certain point in his life, he felt the soul-eating pain of being in love with a girl who will never love him back in the same way. [Natalie gave him a kiss though, just before he left.]
Pause on that scene.
If I were him, here are the things that I would probably do:
1. Cry and cry and cry and cry. Volume up. Volume down. On the nth night, wipe everything wet and forget all about it.
2. Ask Natalie for one date and never show up on her life again.
3. Kick trash cans on the way home, get jailed and stay there for the rest of my awesome life.
4. Get “fucked up and die”. Speaking figuratively, of course. Like that song.
There’s always a positive side to break-ups/heartbreaks. For one, life teaches us to let go. In order to achieve something good, we must learn to forgo one thing for another. Besides, all things are bound to end. Andersen said that. Aesop said that. Even Shakespeare said that. Your just happened to end as normally as others–on the time you did not expect it the most. And in the most dramatic fashion, perhaps.
Perhaps break-ups or the state of being broken-hearted should be made a new form of art. Truly, there’s nothing like this kind of pain which gives birth to poetry, songs and Palanca-worthy essays.
I might try that. One day. 🙂
Witi-Witi 