My heart hurts. I had forgotten that it can even do that – that as it pumps blood, in and out, in and out, it has the amazing ability to serve as something else in our body, beyond just an instrumental purpose. That thoughts rushing through my mind, strands of matter floating through my brain, somehow influence my heart. It is not that my blood pressure is affected, or that I am physically experiencing symptoms that a doctor would say is indicative of the body going through anxiety. No, it is a calm pain – a steady one which makes me touch my heart with my hand, hoping to suppress it, to make the pain go away with just the touch of my hand. Voila!
It is not as simple as that.
An alternative plan, then. Images that would lessen my pain, as I think of others.
Eyes that are big and beautiful, but that cannot see. Belonging to a small body, an 18 year old with an intelligent mind – living life with a rare disorder. Death taking her away last month, and her parents accepting it with intense sadness but immense gratefulness for having had her in their life.
A hand, barely visible under the umbrella. Shivering because of the pouring rain today, attached to a hunched body leaning against the wall of the entrance to the Green Line train station. A can in the hand – a cry for help, for some financial help at the least, if not more.
Two legs, in an awkward position on the ground now because of how she slipped. The snow, falling in large, beautiful flakes, turning the middle of the intersection into a road that is no longer, but a winter wonderland instead. Groceries splattered everywhere and helplessness of the elderly woman with no gloves, returning home in the middle of the snow-storm to an empty apartment save a cat.
No use. The images mesh into one another, a kaleidoscope that one looks at as an outsider, removed from the situation. Yes, the heart is perhaps not as dull – but. Each human being is tested with one’s own burden, one’s own test.
What works, what works through my own sorrow and own fears is a simple action. I engage in it, in the wee hours of the night: my head touches the ground, my lips fervently repeat words and tears stream down my face as I face the One.
And the pain, slowly but surely, subsides.
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