The Heart I Hold
[a short story]
JAN 06, 2025
I sat with this aching feeling inside of my chest for years. I don’t remember where it came from exactly. When it started. All I knew was that I needed to take it out. To get rid of it somehow. I thought that I could take out all of the pieces and put them back together. I thought it would be easy. An easy fix. I thought I might find something, the thing that needed fixing. I thought it would make sense if I could look at it without all the screws, veins, and plastic bits that bind it all together. I thought I might find the wound, the source of the bleeding and mend it with something.
And it turns out, I didn’t really know how to fix it. It sat there, for a long time, on my desk next to all my papers and my favorite pens. All my stacks of books and blah that I like to stare at when I write. It had a nice stature, though it bled and bled and bled. And it ruined a stack of books, all the blood. And I liked the way it looked. It was pleasing. Pleasing to watch it bleed, to watch the veins move in harmony within its own little system. It sat there, for a long time mostly because I didn’t know what to do with it after I took it out, and partly because I liked to watch it bleed.
Maybe I was never meant to fix it, maybe it didn’t need any fixing. But it looked like it did, barely pumping the blood, still broken and aching; maybe I just needed to take it out and stare at it all. All the blood and plastic bits and screws. Maybe I am just comfortable looking at it in this way now because I have lost the desire to put it back together, and because I really don’t know how.
I thought about what I would do with it. I could frame it and keep it, I could cut the ties it had to me and free myself of the aching feeling. I could tie myself to it forever and die with it there, I could throw it all away. I could give it to God. I could kill myself in retribution to my cause.
One day I decided I might try and give it to God. I walked around for a while, in the beginning of this winter season, a perfect time to die, I thought.
‘Do you want this?’ I asked.
The stranger turned around and looked at me funny, like I was high or didn’t know who he was, ‘Why do you ask?’
For some reason I had become comfortable with that idea that someone would just take it, that I didn’t need to explain myself. I didn’t expect to have to answer any questions, only to drop it and run with my freedom, ‘I guess I just don’t need it, maybe it would help you?’
‘And how would it help me?’
I perplexed myself as I did to the stranger, I began to think about it and then he interrupted my thought, ‘If you think giving this to me will solve your problems, I’m not sure anything I do in this moment will be of service, whether I take that with me or not. It wouldn’t affect me in the slightest; in fact, I would toss it into the next trash bin I see. And for you, it might be a great treasure, but for me, it is a piece of blood and skin and serves no purpose, for I have my own. Why did you have to take it all out anyway? It seems to me that there is nothing outside of yourself that will help you, and I hope that you have realized that in ripping out a piece of your own flesh and blood.’
I stood there for a long time, stunned. The stranger stood with me, probably worried for the state of my being. I realized that I was wrong to have taken out the heart in my chest. I realize that all the effort to take it out: digging through the chest bone, scraping at the skin, bleeding everywhere, breaking my fingers, breaking my heart, and then finally ripping it all out, was not worth it. Seeing it all in front of my eyes. That was not worth it, and I realize that it made no sense at all to try and give it to another. For it was mine.
‘Thank you.’ I said to the stranger. He looked at me funny again, like he was expecting something more. He looked at the heart in my hands again and smiled to himself, walking away. I thought about him for a while on my way back home, in the cool air of the evening.
Still holding the heart in my hands, still bleeding everywhere, I walked and somehow I understood what he meant. Somehow I felt as though I had broken the curse. Even though the stranger had rejected my kind offer, I felt stronger. Even though I gained nothing tangible in trying to give away my love, ripping my heart out of my chest, I managed to gain a kind of wisdom that was much greater than any falseness of love I thought I needed. Sometimes it’s easier to let it go and try again.
I went back home and placed my heart back on the pile of bloody books, still connected to the veins that tethered into my chest. I sat down at the chair beside my window, looking down at my bloody hands, my broken fingernails and the blue that began to christen the tips of my fingers. I looked out the window as snow began to fall feeling the cold air from beyond. I decided it would be okay if I died right here, in this moment. It would be okay to let it all go, to die in the beginning of the cold season. I wanted God to know that I would be okay to reunite with this grandeur of divinity, that I would be okay to leave it all behind. I felt a chill run through my body, and I felt like I was dying, my vision blurring with the light that I accepted into my body. I looked back over to the pile of books and it was gone. All the blood and my heart, I could no longer see the veins that were once tethered from my chest to the broken heart that I had ripped out of myself. I reached to the open wound in my chest and realized that it was gone too. I felt like vomiting and ran to the toilet as fast as I could, my vision still blurred and the light still powering overhead, each step I took felt heavier than the last. I felt all this emotion coming up and all these memories I had forgotten, I felt it all and I watched it all fall out of me, in my tears, in the blood that fell from my mouth.
After I had released all the demons that had been inside of me, all the darkness I had summoned by my ignorance, I laid there, amidst the pool of blood that had missed the toilet, staring at the ceiling. When I decided to stand, climbing up from the floor, pulling all my weight up with the grace of the ceramic sink, I stopped to look at myself at the mirror.
It was a funny feeling, to look as if nothing had happened, as if I had lost nothing. As if there had never been any wound at all. As if all of this was just a dream. I thought I might be a new person, that none of my memories, the past I had lived were true at all. I looked into the depths of my eyes and I saw it, what was different. I saw the light that had been missing for all those years, through all of the heartbreak, all the memories. And I smiled and smiled and laughed as tears rolled down my face, into my teeth. I watched myself in hysteria in the mirror and I fell to my knees, praying with gratitude that I had been given the chance to start again. I cried and cried and laughed. And God laughed with me, for it had been waiting for me to rise up all this time. Just waiting for me to reach out and say hello, to ask for the forgiveness I knew I deserved.
It was getting late and I crawled from the bathroom into my bed, out of the cold air. I fell into a deep deep sleep. It was all just a dream, I thought.
God is present in every cell, every room, every atom, every mountain, every Being. It seems that all we have to do to find God is let go, to ask for forgiveness, to let the light it. It finds us at the crossroads, at the moments of in-between, during those days and years and moments of real clarity, of real darkness. There is always a place to begin again.
