You always remember your first heartbreak.

You remember all the crying and this inexplicably numbing pain that makes you want to stay in bed and not wake up until next week. Three weeks from next week. The listlessness, the fatigue, the odd appetite or lack thereof. For however long, you become this zombie, existing in the waking world and some otherworld that exists only in personal history and in dreams. Your first heartbreak is the hardest because it’s the most foreign; by the second or third, at least you’ve gotten your passport and visa and know what to do in case of an emergency. But it’s always the first one that rips you apart, makes you a stranger in a land that’s otherwise all-too-familiar.

The most humbling and comforting thing about a broken heart is that it’s so unoriginal. It’s trite and overdone and hackneyed. The music industry wouldn’t exist without hearts breaking and musicians willing to exploit them. Lost love, rejected love, unfaithful love are like the never-ending thematic engines behind human history, not to mention Hollywood — rom-coms, anyone?

Ultimately, a broken heart can be a beautiful thing — a reminder that we’re sentient imperfect beings who are each, alone, so small. It’s comforting to be reminded of our size. It’s one of the few times when it’s comforting to be reminded that we’re unoriginal in feeling the lumps in our throats, the hearts dropping into stomachs, the tummy aches, the gasps and the sobs. The seemingly dubious reassurances from friends that things will be “okay,” that “you are better off without him/her.” The second-guessing, the who-said-what-ing, the division of the things and the friends and the awkward encounters thereafter. It’s all been done before.