Does heartache make you stronger?

It doesn't necessarily make you stronger or weaker, but it does inevitably show you and those around you how strong or weak you already are. What you do with that knowledge is your decision. The good sgt_preston said it quite nicely while I was working on this:

It might bring a person's inner strength out and make it visible, but only if it was there to begin with. All the heartache really does is bring everything to a point where you can't ignore it any more. If there's something in you that's enough to keep you going in spite of everything that's been laid on you, then you'll keep going.

And there was, and is, something in me that gives me a reason to live despite the fact that Max Mercer has never returned my love and probably never will. For a long time, it was my belief in the evolutionary destiny of novakind. But before that, it was much broader — the evolutionary destiny of all humankind ("mankind" as we used to put it, back in the days before political correctness).

I can't make them perfect. I can barely make myself perfect in more than a few aspects. But I can still improve myself, and help them improve themselves. We can't carry the un-Inspired to Utopia, no matter how hard Æon tried. But we can make the climb with them, and catch them when they fall.