The Heart

I thought you had a beating heart. I heard it those nights I slept next to you, your arm around me, and felt at ease. But now I wonder if it’s beating anymore. I wonder because you left me stranded in a place I need to leave. You left me stranded, with nobody else, nothing else save my own imagination, and now I have fallen from that comfortable place I once inhabited. I know this week has been rough for you. From the already fragile relationship with your father now completely crumbled, to the break up with boyfriend, times have been trying. But that does not mean I care for you any less or that I am not there for you any less. If anything, it only makes me want to help you more. It only makes me want to see you go on and find happiness and comfort more than ever. If there is anybody I know that deserves that comfort, it is you.

But now I am starting to wonder if you have a glass heart. I have helped you. Yes, you have helped me too, but now, in the moment when I need you most—in this midnight hour when I gasp for breath and heavy tears stroll down my cheeks—, I send you texts, I call you and am always met with the same response: none whatsoever. The icy silence consumes me. In mind, in body, in the air around me, that question “why” haunts me. Why…it lingers so stubbornly in every breath I take. Why…it lingers and makes me wonder if there is ever any resolution. There was a moment in the tears that anger surfaced, that I found a “fuck you” escape from my mouth. But the adolescent angst vanished in the wake of my realization. You’ve gone through your own tears, those violent paroxysms, the moment where you wondered why you had the parent(s) you do, and the loneliness that results from such a disconnect. You may not show it like I do. You put on a steely expression—impenetrable—and walk forward with an air of nonchalance. But I know you’re feeling something. We all feel something.

So I am asking you this: do you have a beating heart or is it made of glass? Do you care about me or do you not? Or, are things really this simple? Must one always have this veined understanding? Or lack it entirely, instead possessing no compassion whatsoever? Maybe it is that you do care, but with your own problems, you are afraid to show yourself as a strawberry in these rare winter frosts? Your nonchalance seems a means of shielding yourself, a protection from that which might destroy any comfortable feeling in your body. But I have tried this before; I have put on my best artifice and been something other than my essence (an idea loosely encompassing the spectres of my past). The result was this: constant moments of disconnect from action and feeling, a gripping psychological drama with my self as the only audience member. I may have done well by external standards, but walking on a long path forward with my true feelings as steam shooting out my ears was not a way to live. Admittedly, I have not freed myself from my past. I have not liberated my present feeling from my essence; spectres still linger on every corner as I take the streetcar down to Canal.

But I am making progress. You cannot expect these conversations with ghosts to be easy. Harsh words, hisses, untamed violence, neglect…they want to rip every good memory you might have ever had away from you. Yet you battle because you want to live. You battle because you want to exist beyond them, apart from them, as a wooden toy and not ragdoll. Whatever you might choose, know that I will be here for you. I have a strong, beating heart. You may have hurt me more powerfully than you have realised, but at the same time, I cannot blame you for everything that has happened. I cannot blame you for whatever ghosts you might have, for how powerfully the vehemence may have resurfaced this week. You are not your self only because of what you have done; your life is the ultimate theatre piece.

I look forward. I stare into a great unknown, away from the hisses and pain. I have dreams of the city. I have dreams of that PhD. I have dreams of that emotional freedom, of unassisted gliding through the invigorating air. Whether or not you choose to follow now is your choice. You will be on my mind because I look forward not just for myself. I look forward for anybody who has ever touched me and deserves that freedom too. To all the queer kids. To all the impoverished in inner city ghettos. To all the women wrapped up in thinking they need to be perfect. And also, perhaps most importantly, to those who have hurt us. I ask, taking in the fresh air, who was it that hurt you?