Heart as a Wall
19 April
“The pain you feel today will be the strength you feel tomorrow.” ~Unknown
“I’m done here. It’s time for me to move on,” she spoke softly as if unsure herself. For a moment, I swore she said “I’m not done here,” but she didn’t. She was leaving me.
The poison in the words numbed my body and my soul. All of a sudden, there seemed to be a big hole where my heart used to be.
Survival mode kicked in and I started protecting that “empty” space. For me, it was isolating myself from social situations, even work. I sunk myself into spiritual reading, grasping for any words that might fill the hole.
This was the first time I had felt it. Heartbreak. This was my first experience feeling something so painful that I fell into the cycle we all do.
In Your Own Defense
That sense of an empty heart is something all of us are familiar with.
When we are hurt, we immediately want to protect ourselves. We change some behavior to act as a defense mechanism for the “next time.” These mechanisms compound to build a thicker and thicker wall “protecting” our heart.
For me, it took forever. The pain began to have breaks, yet came back with the same intensity. After more forever, the breaks became longer until the pain began to be only spikes during memories. Finally, the pain began to slowly subside in intensity.
Leaving only emptiness.
What About the Emptiness?
It turns out that emptiness is atrophy. When there is no love in the heart, it is like a precisely tuned machine with nothing to produce. It just sits there and begins to rust.
So, I, as do many of us, waited for the pain to subside behind the walls built from heartbreak. All the while, my heart sat rusting.
Hmmm. Now I’ve got a rusted heart and a bunch of walls to break through.
There’s got to be a better way…and there is.
It is said that there are two ways to deal with pain. One is to shut your heart off so it won’t be hurt; the other is to open it bigger to allow more love to find it.
Un-loving Is Impossible
I loved “him” dearly, you know? No matter how much it hurt, though, I couldn’t un-know that love. The pain subsided, but the love was just as strong—just still there.
Those that I meet now that approach my castle are greeted and welcomed with the love I learned from him. Sure, some may aim to hurt, or do so unintentionally, but they have no idea the strength they’re up against.
Love after love, my heart becomes stronger. With each loss, a new layer of muscle rebuilds over the last. With a stronger a heart, a stronger love, and a new, different, more beautiful cycle is born.
Crazy In Love
The pain still comes, soft and far between. My eyes still tear. But now, it’s for the memory of that time we shared, the gratitude for the biggest lesson, for the little piece of my heart that tells him it’s okay when he’s staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night.
Crazy, isn’t it? I left a piece of my heart with him. My heart shouldn’t be as strong as it was, let alone stronger.
Photo by : wimpydrawings
Content by : tinybuddha
I love Khai
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