Heart of Stone?

Why is it when a person is devastated about a failed love relationship, people say their heart is broken? Does the heart develop a crack that slowly spreads, widening and splitting apart until it falls into pieces? Does it instantly shatter into tiny slivers of fleshy shrapnel? If this really happened, wouldn't there be people all over the world keeling over dead as a result of a broken heart? I can see how the heart breaks, poetically. But literally, no.

I know there is pain from a broken heart. It isn't pain such as you get from a broken bone, but it is pain nonetheless. It is more of an ache that won't go away. It is a longing for something that has been lost. It is the feeling of losing love that you won't get back again. The heart and the head have a direct line of communication, I believe. My head sometimes is full of thoughts that make my heart ache; ache with the pain of an unknown future, loss of love, and feelings of rejection. It hurts. Then again, when my brain is full of happy thoughts, my heart has a fluttery feeling of warmth and loving kindness. The ache is gone and in it's place is a feeling that is like a swarm of butterflies trapped inside with flapping wings that flutter up against and tickle the walls of my heart. It is a good feeling.

Can your heart break so many times that no glue or tape can ever hold the pieces together? Can it go so far that no surgeon's stitch can bring the shards into the shape that once resembled a heart? I hope not. My heart hasn't been broken like that I don't think. I once saw it laying on the ground in a thousand pieces, blood pooling around it like caramelized glaze on a trophy dessert, but those pieces have been put back together into a heart-shaped ghost of what it used to be. Although, since that day, I have felt the stitches holding it together pull taut, the twine start to unravel like the safety rope holding up the not-so doomed hero in an action movie. But just like that action hero who grabs onto the side of the cliff just as the rope breaks, the pieces of my heart latch onto each other and pull themselves back into a single organ. It remains whole.

There are ways to make sure that my heart doesn't break again. They are not practical or pretty ways, but they will do the trick. I could build a wall around it, don't let anyone near it, hide it from view, and keep it safe from hurt for years to come. I could put up a fence, one that you can see through, but are unable to climb over or open the locked gate to enter in. I could repel anyone who wants in, keep them away by hiding what my heart really yearns for...it yearns for someone to hold it, to caress it, to love it. I could do all those things. But not only is it not healthy, it is also not any fun. And it also creates a lonely life. No, I would rather have it subject to breakage yet again, rather than hide it or suppress what it desires and needs.

I hope that heartbreak doesn't happen again. I'm sure it will someday. You never know what the future holds. It could be filled with days of love and laughter where my heart feels warm and full of joy, yet strong as a heart of stone, a heart that only the most strongest of hurts could break through. Then there could be days of where it is vulnerable, weak and subject to pain and prone to shatter and scatter the land with shards of my once-again broken heart. But then again, it will most likely be a mixture of the two. I'm going to do what I can to make the future full of the former and less of the latter. I hope hurt stays away.

I really do.