The heartbreak that hovers

For so many years I tried to outrun my sadness and my sensitivity, but no matter how fast I went it trailed behind me, stuttering on the pavement like the cans tied behind a bride and groom’s getaway car.  No matter how fast I ran I could not evade it, this lingering sadness, this strange but overwhelming sense of loss that infused even the most ordinary moments, this heartbreak that hovered around the edges of my life.

In the last few years that heartbreak has caught up to me.  My deepest wound finally opened wide enough that I could no longer ignore it.  I’ve been slowly circling the black hole at the center of my life, drawn inexorably towards it even as I fear the heartbreak that lives there.  That black hole is the brutal truth that it all passes, that every single moment is gone even as I live it, that no matter how hard I try, how fiercely, white-knuckled, I cling, I cannot hold onto my life.

I’m certain it was my children who forced me to turn and to stare into the sun of my life’s blinding, but evanescent right now.  To fall into the place where the heart of my life beats.  Paradoxically, they demonstrated both the unavoidable drumbeat march of time and the critical importance of being still in each individual moment.  They inhabited the now with an impossible-to-ignore stubbornness, yet they also marked time’s passage in a visceral way.  Unaware of this contradiction, they tugged me to the place I’d always shied away from.  They taught me that being present is both the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever done and the only way to truly live my life.

In the strange, out-of-regular-life lacuna that the last week has been, I spent some time thinking about how the way that I interact with the world has fundamentally changed.  It’s no insight to observe that a marked rupture from status quo can jolt us into reflection and a new perspective on that normalcy.  I realize, not for the first time, but again, that I’ve stopped – for the most part – those hiding-from-my-life behaviors.  Instead, I now live in a permanent state of broken-heartedness.  The savage and beautiful reality of life’s impermanence colors every moment of my life.

Sometimes I am jealous of those who are less porous, who can walk through life without being so frequently brought to their knees by the pain and brilliance of it.  My every conscious moment is filtered through this prism of my piercing awareness of how fleeting it is.  In the last few years I’ve become almost painfully aware of every detail around me.  The sight of a half moon, one edge ragged, foggy, in the morning sky makes my breath catch, a cascade of emotions tinkling inside me like windchimes: the physical beauty of this planet, the sky’s being near and yet far, the concrete evidence of time’s passage in imperfect not-wholeness of the moon.  I suspect this, the way I am so attuned to the most mundane of details, is either an attempt to fully inhabit each moment or an effort to freeze it, like an insect in amber, but I don’t know which.

And what I realize, again, fiercely, is that this is how I want to live:  in the right now of my life with a broken heart.  I want this, in full knowledge of the pain it carries, far more than I want to keep hiding from my life.  This is a decision I make not in one grandiose declaration, but every single day, every single minute.  It’s not even, really, a decision so much as following my intuition about the way I want to inhabit the world, and it lives in where I choose to place my attention.

14 thoughts on “The heartbreak that hovers”

  2. Your posts are always honest and beautiful. I have to say that this one is one of my favorites. I can’t even begin to explain how I felt while I was reading it-just gorgeous.

  4. I think the very trait that sometimes we chide and bristle against is the very thing that makes us so good at what we do. In your case, your porousness allows the details of life to reach you and then, you weave them in a way that brings beauty to all. xo

  6. This is so true. Sometimes I just can’t believe how fast things are changing. This is my favorite sentence: That black hole is the brutal truth that it all passes, that every single moment is gone even as I live it, that no matter how hard I try, how fiercely, white-knuckled, I cling, I cannot hold onto my life. That last part especially–I cannot hold onto my life. I just can’t.

  8. Me too, honey, me too.

    This being present in each moment thing is not easy – it is, in fact, very hard. As you often point out. Eloquently. Beautifully. Exquisitely.

    Thank you.

  9. This is my favorite post of yours – and I love every one. You are my hero. This is how I want to live my life but I am not there yet … I still hide so often. The pain is so great living in the moment and I still shy away. I LOVED this sentence:

    It’s not even, really, a decision so much as following my intuition about the way I want to inhabit the world, and it lives in where I choose to place my attention.

    This is going in MY quote book. This is going to be my new mission statement. You are SO very brave.

    Love,
    Pam

  12. why are you heartbroken aabout ?

    youre a mother with time to write and deal with your problems

    and writing allows you to vent your fears…

    i need more to engage you

  13. What I admire most is your ability to accept the intensity of your life’s experience and your choice to endure; I can only imagine the incredible energy it would require of oneself. If my experience with sensitivity is at all similar to yours, I can say that it is an experience that I personally cannot endure solely on my own.

    Been listening to Florence + the Machine’s album Lung, and love Dog Days Are Over (as I’m sure so many do, and have for a couple of years; I was slow to discover). I love the balance of the song – a tinge of loss, love, longing, mixed with the sense of exuberance, joy, a rush of presence/desire to live in fullness – happy – the warm bubbling of joy. Even a decent album to listen to while out for a run….

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