Uriel González-Bravo

Heartbreak in the Time of COVID-19: Help, help, I can’t breathe; my heart is broken, but don’t come near me unless you’ve been tested first.

2020 was one of the most disastrous years for humanity. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic spread to every corner of the planet, from the deserted avenues of New York to the cobblestone alleys of San Juan Guichicovi, Oaxaca. The recommendations from local and global authorities echoed like a universal mantra: stay home, only go out if necessary. And so, humanity faced an invisible enemy with only a shield of toilet paper and a sword of hand sanitizer.

Work activities paused, and so did romances. Couples took refuge in the forced intimacy of four walls, and many discovered that love, like toilet paper, has its limits. Some relationships took the definitive step of living together; others took a step back: “We’ll pick it up in a few days once the virus is over.”

There is no more effective poison for a relationship than 24/7 confinement with the person you love in the middle of a global pandemic with no expiration date. Divorces skyrocketed, breakups bloomed, and domestic violence reached historic peaks, making it clear that, in quarantine, it wasn’t just lungs suffering from a lack of oxygen.

Safaera by Bad Bunny flooded social media. TikTok dances went viral. Zoom became the boardroom and the improvised party room for friends’ gatherings: “Log in at eight because if you’re late, I’ll be in the living room.” Declarations of love and heartbreak over WhatsApp: I’m sorry, it’s not you, it’s me… or the economic crisis, or the end of the world; I don’t know, the only thing I know is that I don’t love you anymore”.

Virtual hugs, tearful emojis, YHLQMDLG playing in the background, and video calls interrupted by unstable connections—who would have thought that social distance could be measured not only in meters but also in gigabytes?

In Roto: El desamor como un fenómeno emocional y biológico (Broken: Heartbreak as an Emotional and Biological Phenomenon), Ginnette Paris states that the stress caused by a broken heart is comparable to that suffered by someone subjected to torture. The one left behind is left disoriented as if they had lost the map of their life—the one where the compass always pointed to their loved one. The first step to healing is to find ourselves again on that map. But what map are we talking about?

According to Paris, the arts—music, cinema, literature, and poetry—offer us countless maps to navigate the labyrinths of heartbreak. We need to learn to read their signals: those emotional beacons that guide and console us, wrapped in chords, verses, or scenes that, when they resonate within us, feel as if they were created to narrate our wounds.

Pero olvidaste una final instrucción, porque aún no sé cómo vivir sin tu amor (But you forgot one final instruction, because I still don’t know how to live without your love).

The first time my heart was broken was during the 2020 lockdown. How do you cope with loneliness between four walls? Easy—you don’t. How do you cry when the whole family can hear you? With mastery—through strategic silences and fake seasonal allergies.

There were no bars for melodramatic venting with friends, no trips to ‘find yourself.’ Just the living room couch, promoted to an improvised psychoanalytic couch, where tears flowed silently between virtual meetings and Netflix marathons—which don’t cure heartbreak, but at least they numb it.

Music was both my compass and my accomplice.

It is 2025, and I am still rebuilding the ruins of a heart that seems to have more lives than a stray cat. It’s not the same person who breaks it, nor does the pain resemble that of 2020, but the songs that began during that lockdown still accompany me, reminding me that sadness always finds new ways to reinvent itself.

My playlist “Dolidas para llorar y superar” (Songs for Crying and Overcoming) is not only irrefutable proof of my terrible musical taste but also a historical archive of all the times I have cried for someone I once loved. So far, it contains 515 songs, totaling 28 hours and 56 minutes of emotional highs and lows.

Each song molds itself to a memory, echoing the tribulations that relationships left behind. It is a repertoire of conflicted affections, where well-wishes slip through clenched teeth: “Espero que te vaya bien, pero nunca también. Solo lo suficiente, pero jamás al cien. Que te duela hablar de mí, de lo bueno que fue“ (I hope things go well for you, but never too well. Just enough, but never at your best. I hope it hurts to talk about me, about how good it was).

And when anger turns chronic, it comes with the blunt blow of everyday disappointment: “Según me dijiste que no tenías tiempo, que no era el momento, que enfocarte en ti era lo mejor. Pasó una semana y subiste a tu historia a otro vato. Chale, ahora todo encajó“ (You told me you had no time, that it wasn’t the moment, that focusing on yourself was best. A week passed, and you posted another guy on your story. Damn, now it all makes sense).

How could we not find ourselves—and lose the other—when songs become archetypes of something familiar yet personal? Ultimately, we are all protagonists of our telenovela—one with its soundtrack.

Songs map our pain, what we want to feel, and what we wish to become. They are the echo of our highest expectations as survivors of heartbreak: “So don’t bother, I won’t die of deception. I promise you won’t ever see me cry. Don’t feel sorry. Don’t bother, I’ll be fine“.

Other times, they are revelations that lighten the weight of emotional failure and restore our perspective: “Aquí estoy pensando en por qué no funcionó. Si todo se fue a la mierda o tal vez fui yo. La que no fue suficiente, me creíste una demente. Hasta que me di cuenta fuiste el error“ (Here I am, thinking about why it didn’t work out. If everything went to hell or maybe it was me. The one who wasn’t enough, you thought I was crazy. Until I realized you were the mistake).

And in that moment, we understand that sometimes letting go hurts less than staying: “Y me da vergüenza conmigo. Mendigar amor si no me quieres […] estoy cansada, harta, me siento estúpida y quiero escupirte en la cara. Me voy, me pierdo…“ (And I feel ashamed of myself. Begging for love if you don’t want me […] I’m tired, fed up, I feel stupid, and I want to spit in your face. I’m leaving, I’m gone…).

Hoy no quiero olvidarte. Perdón, yo voy a stalkearte. A ver qué más subiste pa’ ponerme aún más triste (Today, I don’t want to forget you. Sorry, I’m going to stalk you. Let’s see what else you posted to make me even sadder).

The paradox of love lies in the balance between the longing for security from choosing someone and the search for freedom born from our individuality. In that bond, the desire for deep connection clashes with the need for autonomy and independence. The author explores how love, by its nature, can be both liberating and oppressive: a source of emotional expansion that, paradoxically, can trap us in cycles of dependence, jealousy, and loss of identity. A broken heart is the inevitable price of having loved. Paris notes that it is not only an emotional wound but also a biological crisis that rewires our brain. Heartbreak cannot be resolved by ignoring the pain but by facing it—because within suffering lies an evolutionary opportunity: a ‘leap forward’ that transforms us.

Breaking up with someone means letting go of the idealization of your loved person. It is a process of creating new symbols and metaphors to help us understand our pain and experience. My latest metaphor from therapy: “I saw him as a beautiful gold bracelet: a jewel I deeply desired but did not need. Yet, it never fit, no matter how hard I tried to clasp it around my wrist. I didn’t need that bracelet, but I wanted it so badly that, in forcing it to close, I ended up hurting myself.”

Recordaré todo lo que hicimos, lo que un día nos prometimos, las noches que nos comimos y soñar sin dormir (I will remember everything we did, what we once promised each other, the nights we devoured each other, and dreaming without sleep).

One of the most popular beliefs about healing a broken heart is that it follows Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s stages: anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. However, while this framework may feel neat and comforting, it’s crucial to remember that Kübler-Ross described the emotional process of facing one’s death, not heartbreak. Love lost rarely fits into such precise formulas. Ginette Paris offers a more realistic model for heartbreak: numbness, yearning, disorganization, and reorganization.

Numbness is the initial response—a protective insensitivity where everything feels distant and muted. Then comes yearning, a deep, irrational craving to recover what was lost, where memories become both refuge and torment. The third phase, disorganization, is perhaps the hardest: chaos reigns, sleep is scarce, and life loses meaning. Finally, reorganization arrives—not as forgetting but as integration. Pain becomes part of one’s personal narrative, and a new self emerges from its fragments.

This journey finds eloquent expression in the series El tiempo que te doy (The Time It Takes), where time becomes a metaphor for grief. The protagonist, Lina, navigates her breakup with Nico as the show’s structure reflects her healing process. Each 11-minute episode splits between past and present. In the first, only one minute belongs to the present—the raw pain of the breakup—while ten minutes linger in the happy past. With each episode, the ratio shifts: nine minutes of memory, two of the present, then eight and three, until finally, the present takes over.

Lina moves through the stages Paris describes: numbness—surviving on inertia: “We’ll get back together, I’m sure.” Yearning—where the past outweighs the present: “I’m looking for an apartment with an oven because Nico used to bake.” Disorganization is marked by isolation and tears, where dating someone else feels like a betrayal. Yet time, patient and steady, leads her to reorganization. Lina doesn’t just overcome the breakup; she finds herself. The past becomes lighter. As Paris suggests, the evolutionary leap isn’t about forgetting but living with a healed scar. Solitude shifts from punishment to companion, and the once-blurred future opens new possibilities. It isn’t a happy ending but something more profound: the certainty that it is possible to continue after pain—transformed and whole.

Paris’ book and the series teach that healing a broken heart requires two contradictory elements: solitude and company. Solitude is vital—it forces one to face the pain and extract lessons from suffering. Yet companionship is just as essential—it offers warmth, relief, and perspective through shared words and presence. Striking a balance is key: too much solitude breeds isolation, where sadness takes root. Conversely, escaping solitude through endless distractions prevents the deep introspection that allows true healing. The path to recovery lies in holding both the silence of the self and the comfort of connection.

Las mujeres ya no lloran, las mujeres facturan (Women don’t cry anymore, women make money).

Ending a relationship isn’t just losing someone—it’s losing a part of ourselves. A broken heart dismantles more than a bond; it shatters the identity we built alongside another person. This “death of the self” is painful, but the potential for profound renewal lies within it.

Among the emotions that emerge during heartbreak, anger holds a vital role. Far from being a negative feeling to repress, anger can be a force that breaks the emotional paralysis caused by pain. Paris observes that feeling anger—toward an ex or oneself—is natural. The real danger is when anger stagnates, hardening into chronic resentment.

The key is to let anger flow and transform it into constructive energy. It shouldn’t trap us in a fury but propel us toward personal growth. Anger isn’t the end of the process but a necessary passage—a stage that, when crossed, leads to acceptance and emotional reorganization.

In the global emotional market, Shakira is a major shareholder. With her latest album, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, she transforms heartbreak into spectacle and anger into a collective anthem. Her work is more than a sentimental reckoning—it’s a pop culture archive where pain is sung and wounds are danced. Heartbreak here has a soundtrack—a journey from fracture to reinvention.

Each song on the album mirrors a heartbreak stage, as Ginette Paris described. Copa Vacía, Monotonía,  and Entre Paréntesis embody the first cracks of love—the chill of January felt in summer because the absence of love is more evident than its presence. Then comes rage—a raw force driving much of the album’s repertoire. El Jefe, Te Felicito, and the viral Session 53 with Bizarrap—an anthem with no mercy for infidelity: “Una loba como yo no está pa’ tipos como tú. A ti te quedé grande y por eso estás con una igualita que tú” (A she-wolf like me isn’t for guys like you. I was out of your league, so you’re with someone just like you). In TQG, anger becomes fuel for reinvention: “Tú te fuiste y yo me puse triple M: Más buena, más dura, más level” (You left, and I leveled up: Hotter, harder, higher level). Here, rage doesn’t destroy—it propels.

The album then moves through acceptance and reconstruction, shaded with nostalgia. Songs like La Fuerte, Tiempo sin verte, Cómo, dónde y cuándo, Acróstico, and Última transform pain into memory and memory into the foundation for a new self. Reorganization includes rediscovering the joy of solitude. In Soltera, independence becomes a celebration, reminding us that loving again requires learning to be alone first.

Finally, Puntería, Cohete, and Nassau close the cycle with acceptance: love may return—renewed and conscious: “Yo que había prometido que nunca más volvería a querer, apareciste tú a sanar las heridas que dejó aquel” (I swore I’d never love again, but you appeared to heal the wounds they left behind). Because, just like the sadness caused by a broken heart, the joy of a new love can also be reinvented.

With this album, Shakira turns heartbreak into a complete journey—from wreckage to shore, from pain to wisdom—a journey that, like all good chronicles, is both deeply personal and profoundly universal.

Close the curtains, but don’t close your hearts

Paris closes her book with the metaphor of Joy and Pain, twin priestesses guarding the door to our inner life: Joy defends love because without it, she would not exist, while Pain reveals its necessity—for only in its absence do we learn its value. A broken heart alone is neither a ticket to transformation nor a magical key to breaking free from patterns that haunt our relationships. It can be an opportunity only if paired with honest, deep work.

Because, let’s be honest—how is it that the same type of person always seems to hurt us, as if they all studied from the same manual? Perhaps the problem isn’t in them but in us—in the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that lead us to repeat the same script. And maybe we haven’t yet found the courage to admit it.

True healing comes from a sincere desire to heal, not from feeding the ego with promises of revenge or performative self-improvement. What matters is not surpassing the other person but understanding why it hurts, which part of us has been wounded, and what needs to be reimagined.

In one of my recent therapy sessions, a phrase struck me: “When a relationship ends, it uncovers the sewer of our insecurities and maladaptive patterns.” The lesson from Paris and therapy converges on a single truth: it’s not about returning to who we were but becoming someone new.

Healing from heartbreak means embracing the joy and the pain that love brings. When faced with a feeling so vast and inevitable, there is only one choice: to take it—or leave it.