heartbreak and heartache

disclaimer: i’ve hesitated to write this post. but i have felt that i need to in order to represent reality on this blog, which is a record of my life. amidst all, all, all the happy and lovely in my life, there is true sorrow that is a very important and somehow scathingly beautiful part of my mortality. in addition to providing an accurate picture of my current humanity, i also hope that this post, and some that will follow, can be a bit of healing for me, and perhaps in some way for another. may it be known that i am very aware of many blessings and beauties around me as well as the intense hardship of others, and i am neither attempting to complain or pity myself. i am just attempting to really really live, to be dripping with passion.

lately, i’ve spent some nights sobbing in the shower. not crying but sobbing – weeping, blubbering, heaving while standing with buckling knees under the most scalding water my skin can bear.

a couple of days ago, i went straight to an ice cream shop after work and ate a scoop by myself in my car, feeling numb from head to toe. when i finished, i wanted more and was too embarrassed to go back into the same place, so i drove to another ice cream shop and ate another two scoops by myself in my car, staring out the windshield with tingling fingertips and throbbing veins.

most mornings over the past six weeks i’ve woken up with a heavy harrowing ache in the center of my chest – a weight that takes blistering effort to carry out of bed. a few of my recent days at school, i haven’t been able to breathe steadily and i have to work hard to mask my whimpers.

there have been several occasions recently when i truly, truly felt i could not stand up because my physical frame could not sustain such crushing, crippling emotional hurt.

i’ve been oscillating between feeling frozen, barren, dead and feeling so fiercely, searingly, excruciatingly alive.

my heart is broken – its fleshy tablets ripped and marred and raw. this harsh and stinging exposure of the most tender part of my soul has been an incredible experience. i have felt deep and bleeding like never before. i have been humbled to dust. i have experienced a dizzying array of emotional and spiritual sensations (manifested physically as noted above), from intense remorse and grief to intense hope and glory. i’ve wrenchingly but magnificently learned and realized. i’ve collapsed into redemptive reliance on heaven and angels and miracles.

i believe, through each bit of my battered scarlet heart, that this break and ache, though intense beyond what i could ever imagine, is not final. further, i believe deeply that i can find spectacular beauty in this immense pain and that i will one day feel incredible paradoxical gratitude for this racking anguish. i have faith that i will, like job of old, “come forth as gold,” that there will be for me tremendous beauty for ashes.

but, i am enormously sad. spindling through my true conviction and hope for redemption is a crystal clear wintry river of grief. i will let that cold cold water flow in as much as it pricks me with lessons and depth of spirit and the instinct to fight for sanguine perspective, knowing that one day it won’t rush so cuttingly.

i am mortal and ripped open. and so it should be.

yes, dear readers, the boy is just a boy now. a good good good one who is not mine.
soon i will share more about the things i am learning.