Rejection

Maybe love is like an organ transplant. You put your faith in the fact that this new heart will work for you and pray that you don't reject it, but if the match is not perfect, even with the best "immuno-suppressants" out there, it just won't take. Maybe you'll have it for a couple of days, weeks, months, but in the end, you need to find another means of staying alive. You have to find another donor, another heart, and hold out that this time it will work. That the heart will take and beat in your chest for years down the road.

Would love be easier if we thought of it this way? When our body rejects something, we don't blame it. It is not responsible, at least not consciously; it is not a process we have control of. It just is. No matter how perfect the match seems, how close the type, sometimes things just don't take. So why do we blame ourselves when love fails? Why do we search for answers, ways in which we can improve ourselves, make ourselves better when in the end, it just did not take. And there was nothing that could be done because the heart we were given was rejected by us.

Is it because we make the conscious decision to reject love? That we, as humans as social animals, have to decide at what point the heart we have is not meant for us anymore. And our decisions are fallible. Nothing we do is perfect because to be human is to be flawed. So, there is not a simple way of comparing our histories and matching our interests and trying to develop types. Even if we could, we don't fall in love based on some pre-determined formula of best fit. Instead, we just fall. At some point, we begin to love another person and we hope that they love us too. And we pray that that love won't lead us wrong or make us hurt. But if falling in love is involuntary, unconscious, unpredictable, then falling out of it is the opposite: it is willed and knowable and a determined decision. And once made, we can't stop the process. We start to reject the heart that was given to us.

Is this why love hurts so much as it dies? Because we know that somewhere, somehow, we decided that this is not right. That we are to blame in a sense because we had to choose. To be broken hearted is as much about feeling that what was once doubly strong is now singly weak as much as it is about knowing we can only blame ourselves. Even if the decision is right, even if the rejection makes us healthier in the end, it does not make us whole. And we are to blame because at some indeterminate point, we looked inside and decided that the heart we had would not do. Not for the long haul. And we decided to exchange it - for our own lonely one or the thought of something shiny and new - but we decided and put ourselves down on the transplant list again.

Incomplete

Look at what you've done
Rid my world of sun
With the things you do,
Tearing my heart in two
Thought you were the one

I am sitting here, crying
Inside, I am slowly dying
Means nothing to me
That we were meant to be
So you can stop your trying

All the feelings that I had
Are gone from good to bad
And the memories we made
Will somehow start to fade
I'll be left alone and sad

Why you told me you care
Why you leave me in despair
These things I'll never know
I'll just watch you leave and go
Nursing all the fear

This time, it is the last
You were my future, now my past
If I say goodbye, it ends
No more lover, no more friends

Memories

I wonder if we're all simply a product of our past? If our genes determine our eyes and our hair and the shape of our cells, so to might our past experiences determine our feelings and emotions and thoughts - like some type of blueprint for the person we are? And how do you escape it? How do you choose to be another person, or at least a different person? Is it even possible to change? Or are our experiences such strong boundaries that we can no more easily cross them than someone like me can claim to be blonde haired and blue-eyed?

I ask because my memories are creeping back to me. The things I have tried to let go of, the things I thought were too much to grasp. I have retained them. Like some indelible stain, they come back to haunt me. These are memories that are tugging at my mind - seeking me to let them in. They want me to remember what it feels like to be cast aside. They want me to remember what it feels like to sit and wait for someone to come to you, that is not yours and never was to begin with. My memories creep up on me at night and take various shapes - they call to me in dreams that I wake from only to gladly relinquish sleep. My memories have a stronger hold on me than my reality it seems. And pushing away seems so futile sometimes.Because my memories are something I know, something that wraps me like an old blanket. They may not be wanted, they may be castaways, but they are known. And the only other thing I have to hold on to right now is an unknown. A bright shiny unknown. And I can sometimes feel myself stretching to reach this unknown, to bring it closer, yet knowing that it somehow remains out of my reach right now. Maybe only for now, maybe forever.

And I become even more entangled in my memories. They pull me back - they tell me to hang on to my hurt, my pain, all the bad things because those are real. Those feelings are what keeps you going, gives you the strength to move on, to move forward, but to always look back - cautiously placing one foot forward as you survey what has gone before. Or standing still, at a junction. Trying to decide if the old path that you know so well will lead you true - a path that is worn grass and bare. Or if that path will lead you back to where you stand now - trying to decide which way forward; lost from ever finding your way back.........

So what of memories? My memories are my cage; they speak to me in silver tongue and flitter on sliver of wing. They invade my mind and steal my heart and tell me what is true, what is real to me. And yet, I feel them float hazily round as the shiny unknown becomes clearer. As the way becomes illuminated. As the overgrown, the weed-strewn path seems much dearer. While memories may hold us back, who among us has it in them to pull free? On our own, perhaps not. But with the shiny unknown of our future, perhaps eventually we can pull through, pull away, and leave the miasma of our memories behind.

Love

You are my sun and moon
Stars twinkling in the sky
You are the earth I tread upon
And mountain tops so high
You are the ocean lapping at the shore
The constant rhythm of the waves
You are the very air I breathe
You are everything I crave.
Like the flowers upon the hill
And the bees within the hive
You belong to me, dear heart,
You make me come alive.
There is no song upon my lips
No tune without you near
No laughter within my eyes
And no happiness, I fear
So take all others away from me
Remove them from my sight
Without you, there can be no dawn
No morning, noon nor night
You are my life, my soul,
My love and so much more
You are my world, my everything,
The one that I adore.

Shut the Gates, Bar the Doors

I feel vulnerable again. I forgot how it is to feel this way. To feel like you've just given away too much about yourself too quickly. And now I want to pull back. No scratch that, I need to pull back. Because suddenly, imperceptibly, something has changed. And I can feel it, even if I am not showing it. It's being recalled back to the person you were and realizing there were good reasons for it. That sometimes the act is not so much as act as truly the best way for you to be.

I have been guarded my entire life. I have been the person that everyone thinks they know and no one really does. And I have survived - because of it, in spite of it. I can't decide. But my past tells me that every time I have let someone in, I have let someone know me, they have used it against me. That person suddenly holds the key to all my hopes, fears, and desires. And everyone so far has used it when they have wanted to hurt me. To tell me why love will always elude me, to reassure me that I will never be attractive or smart or funny - no matter my opinions on the matter, to convince me that everything I fear most is actual reality and I am too blind to see.

And I have let my guard down again without realizing it. Suddenly I was not just showing people what I thought they wanted, I was being myself, damn the consequences. I was speaking from the heart and I was not even trying to be like this. I just was. And I might have been happy. I am not sure. But I am reminded why I hate to be vulnerable. Why sometimes forming an eight foot tall wall and keeping your true self hidden is better than being transparent, than letting people guess what you're thinking and feeling.

And I'm back to my belief that being in control - keeping a tight rein on my emotions and thoughts and feelings and actions - is better than suddenly realizing you've allowed people too close to you, that someone might know you better than you know yourself or at least, be more aware than you are. So I am back - the me I know, the me I am used to. The one who thinks too much and says too little. The one who chooses her words carefully, if at all. Because managing an impression is so much easier than picking yourself up off the floor once again.