As speechless as this dripping heart-shaped stone
18 January 2011 04:44 PM Categories: The struggle
This morning's 3:50 a.m. wake-up involved a man -- not necessarily my man though we we clearly together in some way, were an almost-item -- who lived in a house attached to a library. He disappeared one afternoon with a pack of friends while I sat in on a lecture in the conference room and listened to library talk. When the lecture was over and the sky dark, the man still hadn't returned. I went upstairs to his room. I wandered the house, walked past piles of laundry. I paced. I waited for him as panic rattled my chest. Abandoned.
Or the less fraught dream where the library was an annex to a childhood friend’s house. In a room off the kitchen, her father sat surrounded by cats. He stroked an orange tabby. A calico tossed at his feet. The friend and I, in the full bloom of middle age, walked past him. She had her library books in a satchel tossed over her shoulder. I wanted to ask her about her mother, who has been dead for a decade now, but instead we talked of the mundane, of childhood paths through the woods and decades-old David Bowie videos. The library annex was dark and stark and full of people and I remembered how much I missed the smell of books, the hum of computers, the clearing of throats.
Or the good dream, the feeling of being at home in my grandfather's house. It was a thrilling realization: this was my place. The Little House had been razed and rebuilt. It was now a public building, three stories tall with a thin aluminum skin and walls of glass. Part of the roof was turf and on the middle level an art gallery reception room jumped with people. I watched my mother climb the metal steps to her top floor apartment and reminded myself to tell my husband how the Little House was gone forever, how comfortable I felt in the main house.
Hopeful dreams – feeling at home, watching a place of pain transformed – are chased off by those that make my heart ache: that evening spent looking for this nebulous acquaintance, the worry of the wait, my worthless abandoned heart.
In preparation for an assignment for a class I'm taking in creative nonfiction, I was looking up interview questions, ways to think about asking strangers about their lives. On one site devoted to interviewing elderly relatives was the question: Have you ever had your heart broken? It was such a ridiculous question that it made me laugh (derisively, I admit, a short bitter laugh). Who hasn’t had their heart broken? How can you be alive and not have had your heart broken? I pity people who die never having had a broken heart. They've missed out on a key human experience.
My heart has been broken twice, both times long ago. J was the first to break it, followed by the philosophy student in a quick one-two punch. After that, I wised up, though not enough to avoid a bruising a few years ago. Since I am a married woman, future heart breakage is presumably unlikely. Yet I find myself guarding my heart anyway, protecting it, thinking that if I ever were alone again, I would hide it away forever, knowing even now it huddles deep inside my chest, thankful for its cage of bone and muscle, still hurting and unsure.
This is what a dream of abandonment brings to life again, though I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately anyway and writing about it in various roundabout ways. It’s tiring to hold back one’s heart, to keep it protected. And what am I missing because of it? Only the world, love, life. Family.
I need a guide to help me set it free, to pull it loose from bad memories.
Image by Melina.
My new therapist search began today. I'm also looking for a psychic, which tells you where my head is at the moment. Floating off my body. I keep on editing this post, too, which makes me wonder if it's really finished.
A note on the title: While I was writing this, one of Kevin's poems was going through my head. It's short, so I will type it here. It seems that having Kevin write a poem for you or a poem mentioning you was generally bad news.
POEM FOR MY WIFE
Above the sleepy river
branches touch and whisper.
Earth is telling of a dying.
Let me touch your woolen sleeve
and tell you what I've lost.
Beneath the iced-tea water
my skin looks like persimmon.
"Here. I am as speechless
as this dripping heart-shaped stone."
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