To grow out of heartbreak

I’d always thought that you grew out of heartbreak, that the older you got, the less it hurt, until it entirely stopped having any impact. But I’ve discovered the hard way that heartbreak is just as bad when you’re old. The pain is still awful. Worse, if anything, because of [...] the accumulator-effect: the loss stacks up on every previous one and you feel the full weight of them all.

   But wailing and streeling around being heartbroken is a lot less dignified at my age. Once you pass forty, you’re expected to be wise, to be philosophical, to calmly settle yourself in your Eileen Fisher coordinating separates and say, ‘Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Camomile tea, anyone?’

Marian Keyes