To The Other Side of Dreaming

broken heart

dear stacey,

I don’t know what to write.  But we said we would write every week for the new year and we said we would write to each other about wherever we are.  We said we would be vulnerable—otherwise, what’s the point, right?  We said we would risk, so that we know we’re truly living and loving. 

So, here I am, wondering how to write the weight of a sigh or the breaking of a heart.  How do you write about an ache that curls you in on your self or the vastness of disappointment?  Poets have done much better than I, I am sure. 

I have had broken hearts before and they all feel the same.  The circumstances have been different, but when you get right down to it, to the excruciating pain of it, a broken heart is a broken heart whether by a lover, a friend, a mentor, a movement, organization, collective or family.  

I was re-reading some of my older writings from another broken heart and it fits how I feel about you and I:

You broke my heart. And that’s the truth. And I want to transform it, but first I need to be able to look at it, full on: a broken heart and the entirety of the rubble that surrounds it.  Calling it something new doesn’t change the truth of what it is. 

I can’t will it back together.  I’ve tried.  It beats in two parts now: a beat for the throbbing ache of the pain of what is and a haunting beat, a sullen reminder of what could have been.  And I hate it for that, pity it for that, feel for a heart that can still remember the joy, that won’t let it go. It pumps blood and memories through these veins and sometimes I don’t know what is worse: surviving or remembering.

And I ache for the kind of forgiveness that will let me be whole again, without this gaping wound, gasping for breath and space that doesn’t burn.  I ache for the feeling of sweet simplicity without the weight of a thousand ships struggling to pull against the tide. 

love,

mia

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