SF: Have you ever had your heart broken?

W1: Umm…yeah. I’ve just come to terms with that in the past week or so. [SF: yeah] And it hurts. I’m learning new things about the person—well, I won’t say the person who broke my heart…my partner…the person—and I’m learning new things about myself and these new things just don’t seem to fit with [hesitating] each other…if you know what I mean? And that’s what’s happening and it’s scary and it’s just…I think it’s just more a fear of being alone than anything.

W2: When I was younger I had a best friend and it was just the two of us. I moved to this place when I was eight and it was like seriously, just me and her until I was fourteen. And…I loved her, you know? She was my best friend and I thought we were going to be best for friends for life. We never really fought, never got into arguments, and this one time we were supposed to go to a concert and something happened; I think we were kind of bickering throughout the week and she told me she wasn’t going to this concert. So I had no one to go with because she was my only friend, so I ended up selling my ticket. And the day of the concert, I called her house and asked for my friend, and her father told me that she was gone to the concert with another friend and she cheated on me. She broke my heart. And that was it; my heart was seriously broken in two and we’ve never been the same since and in fact, we feel apart a year later and never really spoke to each other since.

SF: What did you learn from that kind of heartbreak? What did you take with you from that relationship?

W2: I learned that friends are few and far between. I learned that you can love somebody so much one day and then I guess still love them but not really like them at all the next. It’s cruel. That’s what I learned from it . I learned that you can really trust somebody and realize that…I guess realize that it was a mistake. I think I just learned to be more cautious. And I don’t think I ever really had a friend like her since then, so I don’t know if that ruined my love of friends, but, she um…she taught me a lot, and she did teach me a lot throughout the years, but that particular day it was…it was one of the most craziest lessons I’ve ever had.

W3: My cat who was my best friend, really, since I was about five years old, she died when I was in my first of second year of university and uh…that was really difficult. I remember she was a little kind of…Japanese Bobtail Calico, like a really kind of strange cat who adopted us, really. We just kind of took her in and she hung out on our property all the time and she was someone who was really…she would sleep on my forehead, and she was really grumpy with everyone else but really loved me for some reason, and she used to get into her Yahtzee box, and she was kind of fat so she would split out all four sides, and she looked a little bit like Garfield but she always came into the house upset and she would come over and kind of snuggle me, but she was definitely my best friend for a number of years. And then she died; she just kind of stopped eating and dropped a lot weight and we all knew she was sick and had to be put down but I didn’t have the heart to take her to get her euthanized, so my brother and father and sister were supposed to go and take her, but I think the last day I was supposed to spend one last afternoon with her and I came and just kind of laid with her in my bed and at 4PM my father and sister were supposed to go and take her and I woke up from my nap and she was still there and it was about 4:30 and they still hadn’t taken her, so…I was you know really happy that we didn’t have to say our goodbyes just then, and I found out later that Dad and my sister just didn’t have the heart to take her from me while I was napping with her.

But umm, she was smart. I remember right before she died she had to go use the washroom and she was upstairs in my bed and her litter box was downstairs in the foyer but what she did, she actually kind dragged of herself—her hind legs weren’t working at this point so there was a light clunk and she, with her two front paws, climbed over to the bathroom and got right in front of the toilet and peed there. Which is really smart for a cat who’d never done that before. Anyway, then I went and found her and brought her back and went down for dinner and when I came back up she had died on my pillow, and that was probably, you know, one of the most difficult things I ever experienced.

W4: I had a lot invested in a relationship once, but it wasn’t very long, but at the same time, there was still a lot of emotional investment. I knew someone for a little while and then we started seeing each other and then it just ended, so in that sense it took me a while to get over. But at the same time, what I got out of it was a lot of stronger friendships because my friends were really there for me, and it did really shape who I was because I’m definitely stronger and have got more character now because before it was just…I don’t know I guess I wasn’t fully grown up maybe. I think it was more of a naïve, younger thing that I did or that I let happen.

SF: So what was the heartbreak like? What happened?

W4: With me, it was just kind of like, I guess I got dumped for sort of another girl, which is kind of a shitty feeling.

SF: What personal wish of love would you like to give to the world?

W4: Maybe for more people to actually learn to love one another and to respect life in general because I think there’s a lot more people than you’d expect that don’t really have much regard for life otherwise we wouldn’t have as many wars, you wouldn’t have as much animal abuse, those types of things.

W1: I mean, I would like to say, in a cheesy way…that there would be peace, or to some extent things that appear to be problems wouldn’t be problems anymore, almost like they wouldn’t even be seen, because a lot of things are created, a lot of problems are created through miscommunication and things like that, that are just so…it’s more about people having problems with each other, like it’s on a personal level I feel, rather than what the problem actually is. If people got rid of those walls that they have against each other, I guess you could say, and let themselves love each other I think they would focus on the real problem… Yeah, I think that things would just work out in a way.

W2: I just hope that everyone finds love, whether it be with a piece of cheese, or you know, with a person. It’s a beautiful thing and I just really hope that everyone experiences it. Nobody should live their life short.

W3: I think…for people to be gracious and appreciative of what they have…and for people to love more, if they can.

[Sound up on extro monologue]

SF: You’ve been listening to ‘The Labour of Love,’ a documentary about what love means – originally broadcast on WOW! at CHMR FM in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

I’m Shameless Magazine’s web producer Sarah Feldbloom. Talk to you again soon!