RUINED...or NOT?

So, I’m watching one of my favorite ratchet reality TV shows. One of the story lines this season involves a young gay male who has just told his high school sweetheart that there is no future for the two of them because...well...he likes men more than he likes her. Of course, she is devastated, throwing herself to the ground and crying for her mommy.

Now the mental health expert who was supposed to be facilitating this conversation lost complete control as cutie-patootie stormed into the bathroom to avoid the conflict and baby girl hurled herself out the front door. Later, Ms. Psych 101 told him that his best female friend was hurt but that his disclosure HAD NOT RUINED her. This has led to an interesting conversation in my home.

I didn’t agree. I think Ms. Psych 101 might be wrong. How a woman handles heartbreak depends on the woman. And this woman may very well be ruined. Who’s to say she won’t be embittered for years to come? And clearly, she may have a multitude of trust issues that will hinder her future relationships. The baggage this devastation has left her with might carry over into her next relationship and the one after that and the one after that. Baby girl might walk away from this completely unscathed and then again, maybe she won't. I surely don't know and neither does the expert.

My beloved grandmother was a woman who was ruined by heartbreak. At the tender of age of sixteen she fell in love with a man who loved her and a few other young women at the same time. Discovering she was pregnant before her eighteenth birthday had her intent on a happily ever after. Then it hit the fan. Granddaddy was forced into a shotgun wedding but grandmother wasn’t the bride. It seems she wasn’t the only eighteen-year old about to mother granddad's offspring. But she was the eighteen-year old whose father found out way too late to make gramps do right by her!

Granny took a lifetime of resentment to her grave. The hurt she experienced was so magnanimous that it impacted every decision she would later make for herself and her son. It also kept her from opening herself to love later in life, unable to approach new relationships with an open mind and hopeful heart. As a young girl I would often think about the advice she’d offer, always warning me to be cautious with my own heart because no man could be trusted. She was never able to let what grandpa did to her go. It made her bitter and angry and calculating when it came to men and matters of the heart. Heartbreak ruined her and unlike the stories I love to tell, her happy ending was never the stuff of a good romance novel.