NO HEART TO FOLLOW

How many times has someone told you to "follow your heart?"
I never kept track, but somewhere along the line I followed that advice. I followed my heart. I let it lead me. I took my cues from it.
Now look where it has taken me. To emptiness. To sadness. To loneliness. To loss.
I was, of course, a fool. For while I held fast to the belief that love can strike at any time and at any age, I never once considered there might be a price for such a faith. Following my heart and keeping it open to love also meant leaving it open to hurt, to pain, to loss, to suffering, to rejection. For some reason I had assumed that all my previous losses, all the earlier hurts, all the younger rejections had granted me an immunity from that side of the loving equation. But that earlier damage only thickened the skin, only numbed the nerves, only created a few callouses that required far deeper and much greater damage be done before my heart felt the pain. That meant letting someone in much further and being more vulnerable than ever before. That's when it hurt, and it really hurt.
I not only had to swallow the bait, I had to take the hook inside too so that when she tore it out, it ripped out all of my insides with it, instead of just causing a small tear. Or two. Or three.
What she pulled out was not just my heart, but my faith, my hope, my love, my ability to love, my romance, my very being. I had lived for so long following my heart, she left me without an inner compass, without any guidance. I no longer know where to go next, where to turn, what to do because I no longer have a heart to follow. Or the heart to follow.
I am not paralyzed. I am not frozen. Those would be preferred because the paralyzed feel nothing and the frozen cannot experience pain. No, I am left alive enough to suffer on in an empty existence that offers nothing but the promise of more empty aching pain, years of agonizing solitude, decades of hopeless, barren horizons with nothing to look forward to in any direction.
Not that I am going anywhere now. Without my heart to lead me, I have absolutely nowhere to go.