Notes on Heartbreak

by Annie Lord

That’s the thing about pain: we forget it. Our bodies can withstand more than we give them credit for.

Tears flush out adrenocorticotropic hormones, which cause high stress levels, so that you feel calmer, while also triggering the release of natural opiate leucine enkephalin, which reduces pain and improves mood.

‘I live in my suffering and that makes me happy. Anything that keeps me from living in my suffering is unbearable to me … I ask for nothing but to live in my suffering.’ I too don’t want to escape the suffering; it’s more painful when I try.

What Virginia Woolf meant when she said women are looking glasses that reflect the image of man back at twice their natural size.