Most everyone has experienced at least one heart-wrenching relationship that ended too soon or not soon enough. That left them deeply aching in the center of their chest where a loving, beating, beautiful unscathed heart used to rest. Days pass and there are tears. There are regrets and the red flags come marching, parading thru your nightmares like a knife. You wake in a lovely haze forgetting for mere moments that you are still broken. That you are alone. That your heart is so mangled with the trauma that there's no inconceivable way it's ever going be ok....then it so cruelly comes rushing back. Flooded by feelings over again.
Days pass and even more... and sometimes it's years. It becomes easier to close yourself off and quietly pack away the remains of your heart than even bear the thought of opening it back to someone. People come. People leave and it isn't even like you're trying to disguise the lack of complete feeling you've been left with. The numbness and they see it. They see it in your eyes and you know they see it. They hear it in your voice. They ask if you're ok and you say yes, but they know...
This is how some people stay. They get lost in it. Settle into it, like a new skin. Consumed by it. They mourn it, crawl around in it while taking every single painful memory in their hands...trying to reshape it. Make sense of it. Until they realize there's no sense to be made.
And then they wake from this hibernation. To rejoin the living. They decide to fight for themselves. To take back what was taken. They practice self-care and they eat. They drink water. They pray and meditate and they are gentle with their body. They show grace and forgiveness to themselves. Of their choices. They mend friendships. They find a hobby. They write. They sunbathe just to feel the sun on their skin. They drive without destinations. They laugh. They do the things they once loved and stopped doing for someone else. Realizing in retrospect they emptied so much of their soul out into someone that was never going to be full until they, were completely and utterly empty.
You press on. If only in the motions. Heart memory is like muscle memory...It quickly starts to remember. Your heart starts to feel. To beat steadily. If only you let it. It starts to love again. Not someone else, but for the sheer hope of happiness, peace, and light filling your days again. You find a renewed love for the simplistic and mundane.
Then somehow after that time. that pain. the "my heart will never be able to go thru that again" it forgets. Or forgives. It fades. You find it open to every possibility. It doesn't scare the fuck out of you anymore. The closeness, Openness. Bearing your soul. The possibility of another heartbreak. It is resilient. The heart is the most resilient creature and the most fragile, but most of it's built for love. It will always be built for love.
~her-reconciled-heart
