The low, quiet hum.

"Don't depend on anyone too much in this world, because even your own shadow leaves you when you are in darkness." - Ibn Taymiyyah

There's a lot of advice out there about what to do when your heart gets broken. Move on, but not too fast. Let yourself grieve, but don't dwell. Talk to your friends about it, but don't be a downer.

What they don't tell you about heartbreak is the forgetting. Not that you'll forget the pain -- because pain is a total asshole. Pain is the oblivious party guest who keeps you up til 6 a.m. and then has the balls to take home the leftover booze. Pain is designed exclusively, I think, to burrow deep and multiply and linger as long as possible, like bedbugs.

The forgetting begins with the little things, like how his skin feels, or how he sits at the computer, or the things he doesn't like about you. The faint smell of cigarettes always lingering in his hair. How everything he produces looks a certain way, so that whenever it sneaks into your Facebook feed you can spot it as easily as a Gustav Klimt or a Norman Rockwell. How good he looks in sweaters. How hard he works. They don't tell you that over time you will forget the urgency of these things until you come across them again. But they are always hiding in the tiniest crevices of your mind, waiting for the dark to come again so they can crawl out and bite reminders into you.

They don't tell you about the slow, alone plod, where the details fade but the feelings -- of inadequacy, of helplessness, of not-good-enough -- settle in for the long haul. That days where you are able to keep yourself from crying on public transportation or walking around your city instead of just alone in your home can become the small victories you cling to. That you'll have a whole section of your brain cordoned off as the designated "sad girl" section, yet at the same time you look at the ropes around it and laugh at yourself for being so emo. But it helps. Compartments help.

They don't tell you you'll have days when you feel totally strong and sassy and over it, then without warning, a softball of memories hits you square in the gut, and you're unceremoniously carted back to square one, like the sorriest game of Sorry ever.

They don't tell you that your friends really do get tired of hearing about it, or even if they don't, you feel so pathetic and guilty for bringing it up again that you just..can't.

Don't depend on anyone too much in this world, because then inevitably, for one reason or another, you will have to miss them.

Even your own shadow leaves you in the dark.

The low, quiet hum of loss never does.