Mon coeur,
Somewhere after the first, second and third times that the healthy flow of blood was cut off from you, after I felt a deep piercing pain and medical personnel swooped in, calling orders to save you, you died. It wasn’t because I died – though, if we’re being truly open here, I suppose I did come rather close, didn’t I?
It was a case of Emotional Necrosis.
Maybe it was hearing “What did you expect him to do?” or “You’re going to have to develop a much thicker skin, if you want to get through life, at all, Terra” or “He’s dead.” Maybe it was hearing the lyrics, really, while singing along to Jewel’s I’m Sensitive, idolizing their meaning and realizing that I couldn’t remain so, well, delicate. Maybe it was that I grew up knowing, without ever witnessing it, that my mother had a wall about her that was likely impenetrable and I never wanted to be that hard. All catalysts, really, for a foreshadowing that anyone could have seen coming in me from the age of two.
Just like I was never going to smoke, or drink, or do drugs, I was never going to become a cold, shut-off, calculating person. I would never move with purpose, with direct aim and pre-assessed meaning – because I’d planned to only let my feelings and instinct guide me.
By 16, I’d done it all, which included shutting you down. Really, it’s all evidence of the fact that when I say never, it’s foreshadowing. And that at 10, 7 and 8 years of age, there was complete fallacy in my self-promised purity.
You, Heart, have stood silently by while I reconditioned my thinking to believe marriage was the correct next step. You, Heart, did not make a peep when drink and drug and dick became the measure of my success. You, Heart, couldn’t do more than silently scream when I didn’t even love my daughter’s father, or really, her, for a very long time. You watched my father die, shedding the tears that were expected but not culled from grief; created out of hatred and resentment over his short life ending before he’d amended for ruining you.
Heart, you woke up about five months ago. For at least a decade prior to October 2008, you were in a state of suspended animation: you pumped, quivered, had jolts at appropriate times, but you weren’t fully functional. Life, for you, got put on hold. Then, upon waking, you crash coursed into everything deeply and fully.
The next thing I knew, Heart, you betrayed me. This was part of the reason you’d remained locked in under the stairs of my sternum, like some idiot inbred cousin – I knew I couldn’t trust your motives or manners. I blinked and then…
I found myself telling the most dangerous (for you) person that I loved him, wholly and crazily. That I didn’t want to change him, I just wanted him. And I was denied. And then, Heart, you spiteful bitch, you crossed the line when I backed away, trying to shield you, and you said, “I’ll wait.” To him. Because you had a fucking feeling.
Heart. Let’s get something straight, right now. I’m tired, already, of your antics.
I can handle the ups and downs of being crazy. I can absolutely fathom needing to shut off my brain everyone once in a while, because it’s just too burnt out from all of the stimuli coming at it. What I cannot handle?
Is you. Going around feeling things. Heavy, light, happy, sad – everything that comes from you comes at a cost. When I find myself crying to my daughter because she hit me and it hurt my feelings that I was mad at her for it? When I find myself thinking of what ifs and happily ever afters? When I watch and feel surmounting ache because I don’t have what they do?
I cannot handle it.
Now, you’re a beast all on your own, throwing out clots of emotion and reaction. You answer to no one person and especially no longer to me, and I cannot shut you down again. And believe me, I’ve wanted to because being crazy and being heart broken are too much for this worn down soul to be, most days.
But.
It’s not all bad, because if you hadn’t grown past my fingertips, out of my control and dominance, I’d likely never have become as close to some of the beautiful people in my life that I have during these last two seasons.
I never would have told him I’d loved him, and actually meant it for no other reason than to say it. And I wouldn’t have gotten to see him, honestly, tortured by loving me – because you know, I always wondered how strongly his love could’ve really been, this person who chose a relationship with bottles over us.
I never would have felt as badly as I did, that evening while I cried to Isobel that I just wanted to love her and be patient, and instead, I was yelling and angry. I possibly wouldn’t have know that kind of heartache, without something much more severe than her fist to my face taking place.
Without you awakening and bullying me out of my own safe place, I wouldn’t know what discomfort felt like, would have continued to go for the easy marks, easy lays, easy friendships. Give or take could have continued as my mission statement.
Now, Cher, thanks to you, my philosophy has changed, yet again, to (some days) have come full circle:
“I’m sensitive
And I’d like to stay that way.”
~ Jewel
