No, It Wasn’t a Boy!

It started with a blog post. The Last One I wrote.

A colleague of mine had just finished reading it. He swiveled around in his chair, looked at me with amused curiosity, and asked: "What boy broke your heart?"

I laughed. It was a genuine, warm moment. But underneath the chuckle was a deeper reflection I didn’t fully unpack until later.

Why must it have been a boy?

Why is it that whenever a woman expresses darkness, depth, or emotional complexity, it's immediately assumed that romance, or the lack of it, is the root cause?

Heartbreak, sure. It happens. But so does burnout. So does disillusionment. So does staring into the mirror and asking, "Is this really who I want to be?" The ache of unmet potential, of being misunderstood, of watching the world move too fast, all of it can pull you inward.

But somehow, the narrative we’re offered is simpler: if a woman is writing from pain, it must be about love. And if it’s about love, it must be about loss. And if it’s about loss, well, then surely a man is to blame.

Let me be clear: no boy broke my heart (as at the time I was going through my issues).

What broke me, if we even want to use that word, was something less cinematic and far more common.

A quiet weariness. A disconnect. The realization that even when we’re doing "well," we can feel like something is missing.

And that sometimes, we don’t know what to call it.

So, no. Not a boy.

Just life.

And maybe that’s the heartbreak we should be talking about more often. Love, theintroverted.writer