Fever / How to Nurture Yourself During Heartbreak

by Maham Insha

Fever

I type feverishly

Like a mad woman tonight—

Dirt on my shalwar from sitting on the grass,

A coarse throat from chanting and yelling, 

With an elbow sore from raising my sign above my head

I type feverishly 

Like a ferocious woman tonight—

Unaware of the boldness in my blood

I couldn't have imagined losing myself 

I couldn't have fathomed that delicious high emerging 

I couldn't have fathomed having that strength in me

Timid, afraid, reserved,

All cover-ups for 

Boisterous, giddy, daring,

Energy levels soared

Slogans soared

Chants soared

Magic soared

I soared

We soared. 

I type feverishly 

Like a bad woman tonight—

I have uncovered a part of me

This march uncovered a part of me

That rages from inside for a change.

I surprised myself

With the effort I put into my sign,

Its lining made up of so many stories.

I surprised myself, 

Wanting to twirl and dance, do a handstand,

Look up at the sky and watch soft blue fade into the velvet mauve

I did

We did.

I type feverishly 

Like an awakened woman tonight—

I know where my power lies

I know how I want to work, create,  live, aid, resist, build

From here on. Now.

I type feverishly

Today something built up in our chests

And exploded over us,

Our eyes brimmed with tears

Because we had a taste of something

That many of us could have only ever dreamed.

How to Nurture Yourself During Heartbreak (the impractical, poetic way)

This piece was written in two parts, each divided by a significant gap of time.

The heart doesn’t just want what it wants. It throbs desperately in response to its cravings. It can get pierced by even a sliver of our vulnerabilities. The puncture creates a darkness in you, a darkness that is hard to lift. It creates unpleasantries, like picking at the callouses on your fingers. 

I can tell you how to protect the hell out of your heart. I can tell you that this isn’t like the guides we handpick online after typing furiously, blurry eyed into our computers at the crux of our heartbreak. I can tell you that logical, practical, well-structured bits of information have never made my soul feel less swollen, my will feel less bruised. When I am broken, communication with my loved ones isn’t enough. Wallowing isn’t enough. Being told to throw myself into a project isn’t enough.  I need melodrama, I need a voice in my head to turn my sorrow into poetry, because in that moment, I can only resonate with poetry. I want to believe that my heartbreak is great, that it is a travesty, and I only crave an equally poetic response, an equally poetic solution to my woes.

In order to nurture yourself during heartbreak, you need to nurture something else. Give priority to another life, or lives. Build yourself a greenhouse, let the light shine in through the glass and cast rainbows across your misty, humid, green haven. Surround yourself with terracotta pots, and let some soil sift through those calloused fingers. Pay attention to the richness of its texture. Pat it down layer by layer into your bowls, plant the roots of your plants in that base. Let huge mirrors reflect the plants and the flowers. Are you still hurting? It’s okay. Just continue. Place soft petals on your eyes, they need not retrieve any extra harshness from the world. Let the sorrow evaporate from the void in your heart by surrounding yourself with beauty. Choose plants because being close to nature will ground you. The dirt, the smell of the sap and the blooming jasmine will remind you that your pain hasn’t slammed you into another dimension, it hasn’t hurled you into space. You are NOT free falling, and you are NOT sinking into the ground.  You are still on that same earth, which means that even though you may be numb to your surroundings right now, you are in the same space you breathe, sleep, walk and live in. Your life will go on because you, like the rest of us, are still HERE. Your newly acquired green thumb will remind you of this earth, this space, it will melt your numbness quicker as you re-adjust to your surroundings. After all, there must be a time limit to the grief that blinds you. 

In order to nurture yourself during heartbreak, don’t listen to the sad songs. Listen to music that soothes the wrinkles in your mind, that gets rid of the headaches that your heartache gives you. Listen to some Hindi Zahra, some Vashti Bunyan. Listen to some Hooverphonic. Listen to someone with a soft voice. Or alternatively, listen to someone who can pull you into their world. ‘Piggy’ by Nine Inch Nails is one of those songs that you can get lost into. You need a song that will seduce you and whisk your mind away from all the pain. You need a song with lyrics that will stick to your skin and that will make you feel a pull and a tug by your heartstrings. Close your eyes, let the music wash over you, and dance with yourself. Let the lyrics linger at your lips. Let your eyelids get heavier. Just do not listen to music with lyrics that you can relate to. Remember, you’re nurturing with a poetic and beautiful approach to heartbreak, something that you feel somebody would witness and write about it. You’re not looking for practicality, which ironically in this case would be extremely impractical, that is, letting your feelings and your loss or your betrayal ring in your ears by a vocalist on YouTube or Spotify, voluntarily throwing yourself into a dark void, with the wolves. 

And then it actually happens to you... You find that there’s nothing like a freshly packaged heartbreak, literally delivered to your doorstep, to tear into you and provide you with some new perspective. It makes me believe in what I have written, and I know that my wild heart understands the need to be poetic, the same craving I have been writing about. This is no longer the guide that I have been writing over time, carefully arranging my thoughts over the course of weeks— this is my life. I feel the need to periodically change the format of what I am writing, it feels right. 

Now it’s just me and you. 

My dear reader,

Following this new heartbreak, I am going to nurture myself. I am going to develop that green thumb I was talking about, in order to ground myself. Every few days I will harvest the wild aloe vera from my aloe vera jungle in my balcony, and spend those mornings practicing mindfulness while I slice the thick rubbery leaves, scoop out the laxative, beat it till it’s ready to be used. I will bring plant life into my beauty routine. I will massage the aloe extract deep into my skin (circular motions) and remind myself that I am still down on this earth and not floating away into space, not wrenched off the ground, not thrown up and caught by the wind. I will visit the nursery, and take a deep breath. I will pick up more plants for my bedroom, I will learn about them. What’s more, I will indulge in flowers, the way I never can with my student budget-even if I have to buy a single stem of baby’s breath every week, I will cherish it. I will draw those flowers, I will delve deeper into my world of fictitious botany and sketch them. I will spend golden Sundays learning how to fill in their details with watercolours, or acrylics, or oil paints. I will fill my house and my heart with these illustrations and paintings because this production seems to make the pain a bit more numb. And I can curate all those playlists! YES, I will curate the best playlists and I will discover new music and let it cling to my skin, I will sway along with the music (Maybe I will learn to dance?) And oh my God, I can do so much more, more than I had ever started writing. I can write longhand letters to myself on pink paper, laced with all the silver linings of this particular outcome, and I will tie them all together with a yellow string and stick them underneath my mattress, and I can write myself self-care notes and stick them on my bathroom mirror (on top of my newly bought money plant) and on top of my desk (where they will collect like puzzle pieces to solving a huge mystery) AND! I can get myself a new lucky colour, maybe powder blue or sage green and paint my nails in that colour, make the notes on my Google Keep app that colour I don’t know. AND! I can paint my room, I can wash off all the past stains with the new white, I can make everything fresh and clean, I can surround myself with my white walls, my green plants, my sprigs of baby’s breath, my handwritten letters, my little bathroom notes, my perfectly curated playlists,

I can nurture myself during this heartbreak.

Note: You can always choose to be poetry, even when you are hurting and want to shut the beauty out. Don’t, though. Shut it out, I mean. Don’t.