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• Heartquake •
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"In many an hour of danger and heartquake."
- Hawthorne

Heartquake \Heart"quake`\ (-kw[=a]k`), n.
Trembling of the heart; trepidation; fear.
[1913 Webster]

I originally thought I was the one who come up with the word HeartQuake in high school. I was in 10th grade english, we were doing this extra credit assignment where we had a word and had to rearrange and cut out some letters in it to make new words. For example the word 'Mountain', other words in it are Mount, tan, tin, aim, so on. And we had to come up with words no one else in the class had and we'd get an extra credit point. Stupid, sure, but when you're failing its helpful.

So we had a list of ten words or so on the chalkboard. one of them was Earthquake. So I was scribbling down a buncha words, and moved the 'h' and put it in front and there was HeartQuake. I put it down and no one else got it, but the teacher, in her limitless small town wisdom, said it wasn't a word. I kinda figured it wasn't but I liked it.

Since then I kept thinking of it and liked it so I used it as a common phrase now and then. The next school year I had to write a bunch of poems for another english class. I had ten or so poems about lost/failed love that weren't really titled. I just called them 'Love Poem 1', 'Love Poem 2', etc. I got tired of it and started naming the love poems I wrote HeartQuake.

About a year ago I did a search for 'HeartQuake' to find my websites that had my poetry on them because I lost the first twenty original HeartQuake poems (and they are still lost and only a legend now) and I found a quotes page. Turns out I wasn't the first to use HeartQuake, it was everybody's good friend Nathaniel Hawthorne. And it also turns out that it is a word, and my 10th grade English teacher didn't give me any extra credit for it. If I only had Nate Hawthorne as a friend back then.

My version of the non-poetic HeartQuake is any spiritual, emotional, or mental type of anguish pertaining to love. A sort of shock that makes you lose your breathe and it seems like your heart stops beating for a second as you stand there with the confusion of what just happened and the hope that you still know how to breathe and your heart kicks back up again. It can be the aftermath of having someone you were in love with breaking up with you or the news that a family member or friend just passed away, or some other devestating event that leaves you breathless. That feeling you get is a heartquake.