My heart has been broken wide open at least seven times in the past six years.
(Death, miscarriage, breakup, breakup, breakup, et cetera and on into infinity.)
I’m finally doing my best to help my heart stay open, to love for the sake of loving, rather than letting it snap shut when life twists.
I’m not quite sure yet what this requires, but I’m throwing everything I have at it.
So far, it feels amazing. Free. Like a huge weight has been lifted. Like I’m doing what I came here to do - and that’s all that’s required of me.
Because I’m afraid I’ll forget this brave new plan the next time my brain convinces me to fret about my ovaries (because that’s so much fun for everyone), I’m writing this down so I can reference it when I get triggered or when my heart tries to slam shut like a rusty bear trap on some unsuspecting person’s foot.
Because I will most definitely forget how good it felt to say, “I am going to love the next person who steps into my life as purely and relentlessly as I can, no matter how the relationship looks.”
I don’t want to forget how it feels to blaze with love through my texts and social media and every encounter like nothing can hurt me, because nothing can. Or, if it does, I am big enough to see it, feel it, and move through it, love still beating through me without getting clogged up somewhere in my spleen.
Dating from a place of joy and fun rather than need. If I’m walking through life radiating pure love, I don’t need anyone to give it to me. Because I’m fucking bathed in it.
That feels really good.
So I can just show up however I choose to show up in each moment and can allow everyone else to show up how they choose without needing anything specific from them.
While reminding myself to hold my vision of what I really want - the white farmhouse on lots of acres with ducks and baby goats and dogs and a couple of kids running through a fairy forest hung with crystals. My husband building me something in the barn while I write on my laptop in the yard.
Trusting that it will show up perfectly and in the right timing.
Every piece of that image is subject to adjustment, except the life partner o’ mutual adoration / oh-what-luck-that-we-found-each-other and the couple of kids running around. Even the baby goat is negotiable.
(Sort of. We don’t have to own a baby goat, but I will require baby goat access.)*
*Related: My friend Stephanie suggested that maybe her mother would let me FaceTime with her goats and I am wildly excited, to say the least.
So how does this feel? How can I relay this to my future self who will forget?
(Because I am relentlessly human and it feels like we humans spend most of our time trying to remember all the lessons we’ve already learned.)
It feels like possibility. Like I can love everyone who crosses my path without fear. It feels like my heart is a wide open field, rather than a rusty, broken plow I have to hide in the bushes so it doesn’t rip anything to shreds. Or protect so that it can still limp through the grass rather than having to be disassembled and put on the scrap heap.
Really, the best I can do is just keep muttering to myself “Let your heart blaze. Let your heart blaze.”
I don’t know how this is going to go. I don’t know how this is going to unfold for me. But it feels like the right way for me to move through life, because I’ve always known that I’m here to love as much and as best I can, and so why wouldn’t I do that every day to the best of my ability?
So here’s to loving relentlessly, self first, with so much overflow for everyone who crosses my path.
Because the my heart is an ocean metaphor? I don’t know.