The Condition of My Heart

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My heart is trembling. It is a caged animal. It whimpers and scurries around, looking for an exit. It is frantic, trying one angle after another, looking for the hidden cracks, the secret passages. It calls for help. No one responds. It becomes increasingly anxious. It feels unmoored, ungrounded. It doesn’t understand where it is, where it belongs. It has no center, nothing to hold it steady.

The caged animal that is my heart tries to crawl up walls, tries to squeeze itself between bars, slams itself repeatedly into steel walls. It keeps searching, keeps looking for an open door until it eventually collapses and retreats into itself. It curls up in the corner, exhausted, weeping and alone. It gives up. It stops trying. It falls into a fitful sleep.

Then suddenly it wakes, alarmed, immediately aware that something is wrong. The anxious energy builds, the frantic search beginning again. It tries again and again to find its way out, to force its way through, all to no avail. It becomes overwhelmed with exhaustion, once again collapsing back into itself. Once again falling into a restless sleep. And then repeat, repeat, repeat.

My heart is blackened ash on the edges, a frantic red pulsing in the middle. It is love looking for a way out. It is love with nowhere to go. It is love pulsing and raging and looking for its home, a love that has lost its compass, a love that can no longer find true north.

........

Seeing this tiny, frightened, frantic animal makes me want to come in and care for her. It wants me to let her know that I’m here. I want to offer her a blanket and a pillow, give her something comforting to eat and drink, tell her that she can stop fighting, that it’s okay to rest, to be sad, to fall into utter despair. I want to tell her that I can’t unlock the door, but that the key will appear in its own time. That when she surrenders, when she stops looking, a doorway may appear.

Until that happens, I’ll sit outside the cage for this animal heart of mine. Let her know I’m here. Reach through the bars and hold her hand. Let her know that somehow it’s going to be okay, even though I can’t tell her how. Tell her that I will stay here, with her always, until the exit appears.

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