Can A Heart Break ? Oh, God, Yes
Without Prejudice
Although the heart is a muscle and not a bone, a heart can literally break from grief and sorrow.
After a bone breaks it grows back twice as strong.
But a heart ?
Is the scar always there? Forever and ever. And can it be twice as strong after heartache ?
Can you be just as happy or even twice as much after heartbreak.
Will you once again, dance, sing, feel Joy ?
A counsellor told me once, that the statement " Time Heals " is a myth. Grief gets stronger with time but becomes more personal.
That statement is true from my experience.
Time, heals nothing. The pain of heartache is just as intense over time. When the pain is felt there is no blunting by time. The pain is as sharp and as devastating as if it happened yesterday and will remain dormant forever.
Hiding inside that quiet space called " Our Heart "
Not the physical heart but our soul. And there is no worse pain than soul pain.
We all have a soul and we all suffer grief, loss, heartache sometime in our lives. Everyone, no one escapes it.
I think of it as pain so raw and intense it's like toothache.
Terrible if you probe it with a wayward tongue.
So the solution is to not probe it.
But sometimes, being human, we will probe it. When we are unwell, when we are feeling low, a little bit blue, or when memory forces it up to our brain.
A forgotten song, a scent of days gone by, a phrase, just a few words, but the pain returns as strong and bloody and as excruciatingly sharp as ever.
It could be a rejection by a lover, a death, a parting of ways, a moving away, even moving up in life. The grieving for the familiar even though we know the new, the unexplored, will be good for us in the long term.
We might grieve our younger self as we age, our athletic body, our smooth skin, our hair of colour or richness. Our sharp eyesight, not that mine ever was, but I grow weary of people complain that after 40, they now have to wear specs.
Try wearing them from a child.
The annoying red sweat lines on the bridge of your nose, the steaming up of them from a hot oven, the corona around lights at night without them.
There is only one blessing to wearing them. You can remove them. I do when I don't want the world to be as sharp, as harsh, in the blinding light of a hot Summers day.
As a writer I crave the muted light. Not wanting to hear, see, grinding reality. For me I have to dwell at times in the world of imagination. As Iris Murdoch called it,
" The Necessary Gloom "
Another realm of living can't be discovered in nails on blackboard screaming hard light. It deserves the muted Amber glow, to call up The Muse. And The Muse will come in quietness and solitude, music in the background that helps you to think, to remember, to conjure up all that you want to say, to pass on to others.
For the Gift, the talent is not just for you, it's for others, too.
Everyone has a talent, something that makes them unique. They might be able to sing ( Having had a Muso Dad, I so admire that talent and wish I had it ). They might be able to draw, paint, create a garden, sew, knit, operate on broken bodies, create a beautiful home, family, fix a car, fix a life.
Speak several languages, listen to a broken mind, help the heartbroken. Make them laugh with a comedy routine.
Mine is a small talent compared to those, but I have to write. It's easier than not to.
I feel it.
I draw in words what others do with a brush.
I don' just see a field of grass, I see an undulating, waving sea of green, that moves me and I want to share that beauty, that colour, that scent, that freedom with others who maybe can't see, can't feel, can't experience, that wonder.
The same with songs and music. I feel a song to my bones. It fills my entire body with Joy, with beauty and escape. It helps conquer heartache, " washes the dust from my soul ", charges me with hope. And allows me to loosen the ties of real life and soar far above the ground and into the heavens.
And all of these things allow me to go on with purpose, to discover reasons to be here, to tolerate life's injustices, hurts, pain. My path to one day be a self actualised Human Being, as described by Maslow in his heirarchy of needs.
Just like she was. Lauren, my 12 year old daughter who died in a senseless tragedy. One of the ultimate tragedies. I lost a loved brother, aged 11, when I was five, and a Mother to suicide, aged 53.
And whenever I wonder why I am here, I think of those that have passed before me and determine to honour them. And help others, if I can, along the way.
Although the heart is a muscle and not a bone, a heart can literally break from grief and sorrow.
After a bone breaks it grows back twice as strong.
But a heart ?
Is the scar always there? Forever and ever. And can it be twice as strong after heartache ?
Can you be just as happy or even twice as much after heartbreak.
Will you once again, dance, sing, feel Joy ?
A counsellor told me once, that the statement " Time Heals " is a myth. Grief gets stronger with time but becomes more personal.
That statement is true from my experience.
Time, heals nothing. The pain of heartache is just as intense over time. When the pain is felt there is no blunting by time. The pain is as sharp and as devastating as if it happened yesterday and will remain dormant forever.
Hiding inside that quiet space called " Our Heart "
Not the physical heart but our soul. And there is no worse pain than soul pain.
We all have a soul and we all suffer grief, loss, heartache sometime in our lives. Everyone, no one escapes it.
I think of it as pain so raw and intense it's like toothache.
Terrible if you probe it with a wayward tongue.
So the solution is to not probe it.
But sometimes, being human, we will probe it. When we are unwell, when we are feeling low, a little bit blue, or when memory forces it up to our brain.
A forgotten song, a scent of days gone by, a phrase, just a few words, but the pain returns as strong and bloody and as excruciatingly sharp as ever.
It could be a rejection by a lover, a death, a parting of ways, a moving away, even moving up in life. The grieving for the familiar even though we know the new, the unexplored, will be good for us in the long term.
We might grieve our younger self as we age, our athletic body, our smooth skin, our hair of colour or richness. Our sharp eyesight, not that mine ever was, but I grow weary of people complain that after 40, they now have to wear specs.
Try wearing them from a child.
The annoying red sweat lines on the bridge of your nose, the steaming up of them from a hot oven, the corona around lights at night without them.
There is only one blessing to wearing them. You can remove them. I do when I don't want the world to be as sharp, as harsh, in the blinding light of a hot Summers day.
As a writer I crave the muted light. Not wanting to hear, see, grinding reality. For me I have to dwell at times in the world of imagination. As Iris Murdoch called it,
" The Necessary Gloom "
Another realm of living can't be discovered in nails on blackboard screaming hard light. It deserves the muted Amber glow, to call up The Muse. And The Muse will come in quietness and solitude, music in the background that helps you to think, to remember, to conjure up all that you want to say, to pass on to others.
For the Gift, the talent is not just for you, it's for others, too.
Everyone has a talent, something that makes them unique. They might be able to sing ( Having had a Muso Dad, I so admire that talent and wish I had it ). They might be able to draw, paint, create a garden, sew, knit, operate on broken bodies, create a beautiful home, family, fix a car, fix a life.
Speak several languages, listen to a broken mind, help the heartbroken. Make them laugh with a comedy routine.
Mine is a small talent compared to those, but I have to write. It's easier than not to.
I feel it.
I draw in words what others do with a brush.
I don' just see a field of grass, I see an undulating, waving sea of green, that moves me and I want to share that beauty, that colour, that scent, that freedom with others who maybe can't see, can't feel, can't experience, that wonder.
The same with songs and music. I feel a song to my bones. It fills my entire body with Joy, with beauty and escape. It helps conquer heartache, " washes the dust from my soul ", charges me with hope. And allows me to loosen the ties of real life and soar far above the ground and into the heavens.
And all of these things allow me to go on with purpose, to discover reasons to be here, to tolerate life's injustices, hurts, pain. My path to one day be a self actualised Human Being, as described by Maslow in his heirarchy of needs.
Just like she was. Lauren, my 12 year old daughter who died in a senseless tragedy. One of the ultimate tragedies. I lost a loved brother, aged 11, when I was five, and a Mother to suicide, aged 53.
And whenever I wonder why I am here, I think of those that have passed before me and determine to honour them. And help others, if I can, along the way.
