give me 12

I really don’t get it why other people blame their emotional pains to their heart.

Every time they feel emotionally hurt- may be a breakup from a romantic relationship or a major family setback, it all boils down to a single thing- they coin it as a ‘heart break’. Why do they even label it as a heart break when the heart is just an innocent muscle, doing its sole job of pumping blood for respiration? It’s insane, isn’t it?

By definition, a heart is a muscular organ with a circulatory system that is responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions. I don’t see it anywhere in the definition that it is caught up in any possible way of taking charge of our emotions. It is the brain which does that. Thinking, decision making and even loving are just some of the utilities of our brain. 

My Psychology teacher once told us that when we are in love, the sensation is felt and being cultivated in the deepest part of our hypothalamus. So, instead of saying, “I love you from the bottom of my heart”, just say “I love you from the bottom of my hypothalamus.” I know it sounds hilarious but it is based on scientific facts. I can’t help but remember a couple years back when a giant zit had grown on my forehead and some of my relatives teased or more like accused me of being in love- all because of the zit. I mean, how can science explain that?! Unless they come up with an justification saying that love is now equated with growing zits, I would perhaps start to believe but as of now, there’s no way I will.

As for the heart break part, I have a slight idea on the underlying principle on why it’s dubbed what it is- a heart break. Of course, when we get emotionally impaired and eventually burst into tears, it comes to a point when we find it difficult to breath. There was one instance in my life when I cried so hard that my eyes didn’t look like the typical human eyes anymore. They were sore. I cried a lot, consuming several packs of tissue. And mind you, this information is not fictitious. If only you were there to witness that moment, you would probably find me as the feeblest person in the world because I was seemingly pathetic and hopeless. And yes, the mere act of breathing was an ordeal for me. You would probably say, “Omigod! Somebody please sedate her!”  We cry so hard until we feel like our heart or our whole circulatory system finds it hard to allow us to breathe. Maybe that’s why it’s called a heart break because it hurts to a great extent that we feel like our heart is going to break into pieces. It makes sense.

Now why am I telling you about these things? Simply put that I have just gone through one of the most painstakingly difficult situations in my life where I had to choose between the good and the good. It’s a dilemma, I know. I went to the bathroom and drowned myself in tears for 12 minutes. That’s all it takes for me to sober up- 12 minutes. I actually got this philosophy from one of my closest friends who told me that anything emotional only lasts for 12 minutes and the succeeding minutes after that are already considered as self-inflicted. I used to cry over petty things for hours and I finally came to my senses that crying for hours is foolish. For one, you get to bring up even the most irrelevant things and two; you might get dehydrated with all the amount of liquid coming out of your system. So I considered the 12-minute philosophy when it comes to crying.

Without a doubt, our emotions escort us to do the most impulsive things. Emotions can fetch us laughter or could pilot us to tears. What’s anomalous is that we often blame our heart for every single emotion that we feel. Or if a person is a little bit knowledgeable about Anatomy and Psychology, he or she could transpose the blame from the heart to the brain or the hypothalamus. But for crying out loud, please stop blaming your body parts for having caused you excruciating pain! It is certainly not their fault.