Another Step Taken: Healing a Broken Heart.
{Photo via Tumblr}
By Kelsi Hole
I find myself smiling more often now.
The expression lingers naturally around my lips, and it almost comes as a surprise when I realize that he has not crossed my mind in a while. There is something about being happy without having to work for it.
It has a different taste to when sadness sits in the background, a dark twist that is unavoidable.
I’m not running through conversation after conversation inside my head. And now, with the noise of them gone, I am beginning to hear myself again. Hear the soft tune that has been lost in the demands of trying to understand. Feel its lightness, where I have been weighted down.
Where once I locked myself in a small room, cold and dark, memories echoing and replaying over and over again, now I am outside. The sun is on my skin, and my head is tilted back; I absorb every golden fleck of light that falls upon me.
I am going to stay here for a while I think. In this place where I do not have to struggle not to think about him. Where memories of him, if they do visit, are bittersweet but warm.
Here, for moments in time, the hurt of what he did has faded into silvered scars that decorate my skin, scars that will tell the stories to whomever cares to ask. Just as his scars once told me of his life.
I’ve never had many scars. Maybe it was time for me to gain some.
I cannot claim to be healed though. There are still times where fear grips my heart, squeezing so tightly that I cannot draw breath into my lungs, cannot move. Because the light means that I am letting him go.
The light means that he will fade from my life, till one day his name will sit foreign on my lips, and I will forget all we had planned for our future, and how he asked me to share in it. And I’m scared of letting all that go.
It once meant the world to me; it still does if I am honest, though I wish I wasn’t. At least not to myself.
Turning my back on it feels like I am betraying everything. My heart does not care that he was the first to betray, and that I only do so now out of necessity. My heart only knows that I am walking away from something I held true and dear.
And in those moments I cry.
I didn’t cry during those first few months after learning, and losing. Then again, I didn’t really allow myself to feel anything when it came to him. I kept myself carefully numb around it, and focused on everything positive that I could about life.
Inside, I yelled at him, told him all that I could never hope to tell him in real life. But I didn’t really feel it. I kept all of it at a distance, bathing it in darkness, as if when I next brought it to the light it would have healed, there in the shadows.
It didn’t. But it gave me time to find my footing again. To prepare myself. To learn that when the pain hits, to bunker down. To take a deep breath, and hold on, to know that it will pass.
It has done so many times now, and it will many more times down the road. In these moments, I have learnt that I do not need to feel foolish for hurting. I have accepted that it is not a sign of weakness.
What I felt was true; I loved the darkest shadows of his soul, and the burning brightness that strove so hard to keep them at bay. I loved all about him, even as I hated all that broke us. Even as it caused him to stray, his selfishness, which was both a strength and a fault, finally tearing us apart.
I loved him, and I will not be ashamed of that.
It is not an easy path healing a heart that is bloodied and worn, and nor should it be. But keep your eyes open though they may droop with tiredness, with all the longing and hurt taking its toll. For in the end, you are the one on this path; their part has been played. And each step you take shapes you.
Do not hurry. Hurt when you need to, but do not hold on when happiness beckons. Take deep breaths, and feel your chest rise and fall. When anger takes you, let it sear through you and die away. Anger is a dangerous beast, and should not be invited to stay.
And most of all, enjoy the smiles, the tired smiles, the smiles that you just cannot stop. They will come easier with time.
*****
Kelsi Hole has always believed that she is woven out of ink, words, and stories. Stories that have never been happy to stay within her, but demanded freedom in the form of writing from a young age. An infliction she cannot cure, it gives her pleasure to think that one day she may bring the enjoyment of reading to others. Complementing this side to her, she has an overwhelming love of Science, mainly Maths and Physics. To her, Mathematics is as much a story, a description of the world around us, as words are, and that there is poetry in a perfect equation. To this end, she studies Mathematics and Physics, in her distant, beautiful home country of New Zealand. You can connect with Kelsi via Facebook.
{It’s better to have loved…}
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