Oops, love is torment. Even the joyously in-love are tormented by the pursuit and the prize. But more so are the heartbroken: the boy and girl who know that their young love does not skip down the same path, the man who has been dumped by what he thought was his eternal one, the woman who struggles to trust after being betrayed, and the man who quietly longs for the perfect wife.
It is an ironic twist that in the midst of trying to write an essay on love I see nothing but hurt around me. My heart has been heavy as I watch those in my life struggle to make sense of love and the loss of its elating beauty. What is supposed to be the most positive of emotions can, in an instant, leave a person a total wreck. It is hard to watch my dearest friends feel their way through the darkness of love’s departure, and harder still, for me to then try to write about it in an optimistic tone.
I would like to believe that we choose who our hearts gravitate towards (I even watched a special television program dedicated to the subject – science was, in the end, disappointingly inconclusive). I like to think that my close friend can take her heart out to a movie and move on. But really, we all seem to be on an incredibly risky path with not much more than our choices to steer. All the aching hearts around me will eventually heal because of their choices towards moving on and letting go. Yet, until then, we cry.
Here after my divorce, now that my wounded heart has been restored, I still find myself in a semi-tormented state of love. I had chosen to be strong. And I made it. I had chosen to take the steps of letting go. And I did. But now I feel as if I am walking a slippery slope and the choices have not subsided. I have to choose to trust. I have to choose who I open my heart up to. It requires so much vulnerability; the same thing that has been bruised from betrayal is now summoned once more, and as it limps up from deep within my heart, I second guess everything.
Relationships are different once you have lived through the loss of one…or two…or three. Vulnerability is different once it has been damaged. Maybe I cannot choose who I think is attractive or who I seem to click with, but I can choose who I open my heart up to. There is a difference between having a chastity belt around the heart (not recommended) and guarding it.
Sadly though, just like me, my loved ones had let their guard down hoping for something everlasting and true, and now, as I feel their tears, I know that also like me, they have felt love’s torment. However, I do not keep company with wimps; they too will survive.
So where do we go from here? As I stare at my writing colleague’s paragraph on 1 Corinthians 13 I grasp for hope. But reading those words my mind retreats to the memory of the folded paper I handed my husband-to-be. As he unfolded the small, white sheet he saw my heart, my vulnerability. On that paper I had written 1 Corinthians 13 as my way to tell him I loved him. It was my vulnerability; my idea and openness to love. Now with his love long gone, I stare at that verse, still knowing it as my heart’s cry. And that is hope… that is where we shall go from here.
you are good.
i love you.