Dear Heart,

We've been through a lot, you and I. Almost 35 years of choices, experiences, wisdom, failure, and dreams. You've been beating every day, every second, and carrying my wishes throughout every beat. You've been strong, you've let me down, and you have hurt. I've hurt you. I know I have. You've hurt me too. Neither of us is blameless.

I thought I knew everything about you the first time I fell in love. It was hard, this love thing. Hard work indeed. The fragility of human life resulted in your first break, the promises that I made within you are not ever going to be fulfilled. You split that day. A part of you died and will always be gone, but that doesn't make you any less. It just makes you real.

You showed me someone else though, heart. And you gave me love in a way that I never expected to love in - with complete abandonment. With joyful noise and implicit faith, I love with everything.

The day my children arrived you grew exponentially. Secret hidden chambers opened wide, showing me parts of me that I could never have imagined existing. And corridors, options, areas keep opening as every day passes and every new milestone is hit. A hesitant step forward from my daughter lurches open another alleyway, and that one hallway where I held her in the middle of the night, smelling of milk and soap and cotton, closes. My son figuring out how to deal with a puzzle shines light in a brand new room inside of my heart, one I've never seen. And the days where he fell asleep on my chest several times a day, his thumb in his mouth and his fuzzy hair drifting in an infinite breeze, is gone now.

This past week, my heart, you and I realized something new. We learned that you can break still, that you can fall apart and I can fall apart with you. We learned that sometimes there is no room for pride, not when you understand the consequences of what could happen, not when you see what there is to lose. We learned that there are measures you're willing to go through for love, and that there are measures we're both willing to go through in order to save what is so precious to us both. That when silly, light-headed romantic love fades what lies beneath is something infinitely more strong, more wonderful, and more real than you ever whispered to me in the dark when we were young.

This past week, my heart, we went out on a limb and we dropped all pretense. And together we made it work. It was hard exercise but we are better for it. We're both bruised. We're all bruised. But life is decidedly different now, now that we have seen what could happen, now that we have seen what could be. We'd both started taking things for granted. We'd both started to think that the two of us were invincible, when the truth is, we're not. We're strong, we can get through anything, but it doesn't mean we don't come through the other side that much more diminished, that much more raw.

Thank you, heart, for being something that guides me and is there for me, a constant companion through the pain and the joy, through the mistakes and successes.

Everything is beautiful and new when I have you in it.

Love,
Helen

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 01:58 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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