Heart

...just writing...thinking...writing...

If life was seen in terms of the heart- the real physical heart, and you had a monitor for viewing; the screen would be full of lulls and blips and spikes. You would clearly see where your heart skips a beat, murmurs and moves on. You can see on a monitor a heart attack, and the extra labor the heart undertakes to try and recover. A stroke you can identify, with its damage-caused collapsing. You would see it all right as it was happening.

If that were true, then I would have seen my heart dieing. Dieing slowly struggling for life. I weakened my heart with the drug of anxiety; I stressed it with the weight of sorrow and arrested it with despair. In its attempt to sustain, it raced and skipped and pounded but couldn’t keep pace. Emotionally bedridden and mentally broken I waited for the beats to cease. It was hell in the metaphorical hospital complete with flowers and “get-well soon” cards mocking the life slipping from me. Adjusting, readjusting hanging another IV…still dieing.

But before the final blow I received fresh life- a new heart placed inside. Rushed slowly down the hall; prepped and ripped open. My ribs peeled back, someone standing inside my chest. An unknown violence was occurring deep inside me, as I was dream-sleeping the pain away. Opening my eyes once again it is the peace I remember; the calm, the steady- inside and out. My lungs full, for the first time in so long, with the air I was breathing in anew.

The process of dieing to new life was painful and I carry the memory with me like a scar. But like all scars, it means I lived- lived to tell about it. With this unique transplant of hope, there is no limit to what I can do with the heart inside me- no fear of infection or rejection. It is more mine than the one before - more whole and healed than the one grown from conception. My new heart is the heart I was always meant to have. My new heart is freedom and love.