Sometimes your heart opening can feel like it’s breaking.
Try not to confuse the two.
A slow, deliberate pulling apart of the fibers that hold it together is just like the stretching and strengthening of a muscle: there are millions of minor tears along the way and a rickety dull ache in order to get to the newly expanded, sturdier you.
Sometimes your heart opening can feel like it’s breaking.
The experiences are different sides of the same two-lane highway running through the deepest, dampest, greenest mountain gorge. The oncoming headlights warn of what’s ahead but you keep driving knowing you are going in the right direction this time, yet conscious of the fact that you could just as easily be turned around.
And that’s why sometimes opening feels like breaking.
We are passing through the same gates of vulnerability in either direction.
After a great deal of introspective time and insulated living I thought I was actually breaking apart when I began reconnecting again to life, to love, to people. At times now I feel like I am being stretched apart from opposite directions, as if my wrists were tethered to an unmistakable binary force. The rush of pain hit my heart like a cartoon anvil and all the fractals of a former life came rushing back.
I didn’t understand how I could feel such pain in a time of such awakening. How could I suffer this lead weight and heaviness upon my chest when at the same time I knew I was expanding into a clearer, freer and more authentic version of myself? Why did this hurt so much?
At the first touch of what I identified as pain I felt my spirit retreat, violently shaken into a cower. I wanted to hide, to pull my head, my heart and my whole being inward like a tortoise to her shell. I heard my body say, “Screw this place.”
Sometimes your heart opening can feel like it’s breaking.
It takes an immense amount of will power to overcome this natural habit. Muscle memory has to be rewired, realigned and redirected. But first I needed to realize that I wasn’t being broken or shattered – that I was actually opening and growing into myself and into love. And growing is uncomfortable.
I am constantly shifting my association of this feeling away from being small and being fragile and into being whole, complete and strong enough for a life of enduring love in all her beautiful forms.
Sometimes your heart opening can feel like it’s breaking.
And in both cases, there’s no going back.
Leave a Reply