Monday, October 31, 2011

Small Diversion - Going off Topic

As you can see, I haven't written anything in quite awhile.  It started as frustration with making no progress on the clutter front.  Then it became self-perpetuating silence.  The more I don't write, the more I can't write and so on and so forth, blah, blah, blah...

For the past 6 Mondays darling man and I have been going to a writing class offered by the local recreation department.  I was hoping it would shake something loose so I could start writing here again.  I mean, seriously, there are so many thoughts in my head that I want to let out.  Anyway...finally for the last class tonight I was able to put some words to a thought.  So I'm going to share it here as a Small Diversion with, hopefully, more to come.

 Heartbreak
There are a lot of ways to answer the question “Who was the first person to break your heart?”  I could be cute and say Ricky in second grade who gave me a Cracker Jack ring but then took it back so he could give it to Valerie.  I could be dramatic and talk about any of the guys who said “love” but left anyway.  How does a heart get broken anyway?  I think perhaps, every time, I’ve broken my own heart and blamed the other.

It seems to me, the times when it feels like my heart is breaking, I am holding so tightly to my idea of how things should be that my poor heart, always alert to danger, becomes a tense, brittle thing, easily shattered when those expectations are not met.

I recently watched a film clip of a young man picked up and tossed a quarter of a mile in a tornado.  He had no broken bones, no internal injuries.  The reason for his amazing survival?  Having first been knocked unconscious, his body was completely relaxed as it tumbled through the air and slammed to the ground.   

There is a lesson here, I think.  If I relax into life, into the moments, if I keep my heart open and soft, it might get bruised but it cannot be broken.