*
*
Sometimes I get caught up reflecting on how a select few splices of my loving heart are walking around in the world, held by varied and treasured souls. It's not that I even want those pieces and moments back, but I feel them, know they're around and about. Wonder I do, as Whitney sang, where do broken h#$*rts go? I can't perceive those slivers ever fully making their way back to me and it's ok. Once after my last major breakup I found myself gravitating towards this locket that was my grandma's and/or great grandma's--I started wearing it regularly around my neck, it felt urgent to have a consistent physical reminder of just how precious it was, how precious and to be treasured I am. To contend with what's perhaps really at stake. What's offered up and brought to the table, ya know?
I comprehend and do believe to know why some become callused and distant and build up a shell around what remains. The prospect of losing even more seems ghastly and unwise; indeed, I have moments in which I sense this desire within myself--to close up and remain so. Relatively, I grasp the appeal and function, I want to close people out most explicitly and find ways to sustain on alternative bonding and hobbies and a many other thoughtless and time-sucking occupations. To distract oneself from the inarguable void and loneliness we all sense as sentient and emotion-filled beings--and believe me, it's not a bad thing, rather just a real thing. A thing that once felt cold and unfeeling and broken and now seems honest and comforting. There's no amount of people or food or sex or jobs or writing that might ever fulfill that darkness, rather it's a sensation to channel and sit upon, to befriend. And indeed, I have found myself much more than ever at one with the skeleton babe in me that I begrudgingly drug along and ran from for my whole of existence. The view to her is as clear as ever and still rattles me, but I know her. Have greeted her many times as a friend. And I should venture to suggest that anyone who continues to meet me these many recent days and beyond will come to know her, too, now a tender and unshakable part of me. The worn and skeleton-ed pieces of me walking around with these specifically special others, that as much as it ripped me to shreds in moments, I find such grace and comfort and contentment in knowing them. In knowing I loved as wholly and deeply as I knew possible in those times. And dammit, I'm glad. I'm honored to have been blessed with so many connective opportunities.
I continue now on this path alone and lonely, but not frightfully so, primed to go toe-to-toe with fellow warriors--perhaps ever wearied from the storms, but with eyes and spirit open and in the ways I might be, too. It may be corny [as so many things might sound], but very honest to assert that knowing love and and non-expectant vulnerability and tenderness is to also likely know vastly wide loss and arching and warring with oneself and the forces beyond. This warrior skeleton lass is weary but not worn, is parts broken and remade, and is in this kindly raw space of accepting fully that others may come and go. Yet I shall stay here within my own perfectly imperfect being, finding the healthiest and happiest mechanisms for sensing and riding it through to the honest to goodness destination and truth. Anyway, it makes sense to my spirit and head. So that's something.
