For Chronically Broken Hearts

"Merry Christmas - I wrapped it up and sent it

With a note, saying I love you I meant it

Now I know

What a fool I've been

But if you kissed me now

I know you'd fool me again"

The holidays can be excruciating when you associate it with a broken heart, or multiple broken hearts. Your body shakes as it remembers the traditions you celebrated with the loved one that's parted ways with you for one reason or another, wondering if it meant anything when it happened in the first place, and what it means now. All you really want to do is erase it, erase the person, if you can't get them back. 

After what happened you don't want it back, but deep inside you do. It's all you want. Those stolen moments in time to be real, to be yours again. 

Does a heart ever heal? How many times can a heart be broken?

I've found in life I tend to start recovering from one broken heart, only to have it broken again by the people who promised they were different. 

You would think it hurts less each time, but it hurts more.

Because each time you have to dig even deeper into yourself to trust. You dug beneath your trauma. They penetrated the thickness you developed for safety. Each time you have to dig deeper and deeper. 

You have to put more and more of yourself forward. Give away more of yourself. Your sacred vulnerability, which is all that you have of yourself to give. 

How do you know what you can trust now? 

If this relationship lasted 5 years, and they promised me the world - do I wait 5 years to trust again? 

How do I trust myself? I let them penetrate me, when I said to myself never again. I even said it to them: Never again can I trust, no matter how much I want to. It was up to me to protect myself, wasn't it? 

But they were older and wiser, and they said we'll show you. We are better than them. I am better than them. They were bad people. They didn't love you the way we do. We're stronger. 

This one lasted 7 years. So, I not only need to find someone now, but I need to be 32 before I can believe I might have a chance of it being real. 

How about the ones who helped raise you. What does that mean? When you lose the people who shaped you into who you are. 

Worse than that-

They knew you as a baby, and saw you through adulthood - then suddenly as an adult, you're a stranger. You're on trial like a criminal. Your worth is evaluated in a meeting with other adults who knew you as a child. Is this person's sin forgivable to us? 

It wasn't. 

You are outcasted. 

It stays with you. 

It's not just grief. It's trauma. 

Time passes, the wound is still there.  

Loss after loss ensues. 

People call you a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you snarl, but you internalize the shame.

Everyone deserves love. No one deserves to be left alone because of who they are, because of the trauma that shaped them.

Every time I never see it coming. But I also expect it to come. I expect it so I push as hard as I can to prove that they aren't lying, they are better. They can handle the worst of me. Someone in the world won't hate the worst of me.

Until they're not better. They prove I'm what I thought I was. 

And all those things they said to you about how much potential you have, how you'll never be given up on - all of the "good" done is exponentially undone. Because now, you believe worse than the opposite. You don't only believe the horrible things about yourself, you believe that the people who loved you the most, the people YOU loved the most, had to leave you because of how inherently bad you are. When they promised with everything inside of them that they never would. 

In this world, I float. I don't feel like I exist, but I'm watching it all happen. Like a movie I know the ending to. But I hope for better. 

Hope, it can be so cruel. Often it feels like I'm just longing and waiting for something better to come that just might never. And when I finally start to trust it, it slips from under my feet, and I'm crumpled on the ground. 

What was under me? It was what I thought was unconditional love. But no, it was the hope for it. It was safety and security. Or, it was the hope for it. It was all conditional. 

Or is the love unconditional, but the will to show it just goes away. People give up. People decide your hard isn't worth their time. 

And it breaks on and on. Day after day. 

You hear someone new tell you they'll always be there, and the small part of you feels good and the rest of you aches, remembering the last person who said that to you. 

I read a quote the other day that said:

I silently await

The day

Your memory

Doesn't haunt 

My thoughts

In any form

At all

But this longing,

It is immortal. 

I don't think

You'll ever 

Leave my mind.

Not in this lifetime.

-Samira Vivette

I can be surrounded by all of the most wonderful people in the world, and it doesn't seem to matter. Anymore. The world is tainted with loss, heartbreak, and a sad waiting for the people who love me to say the words that haunt me every day. The last parting words from the last person who promised they would be with me until the end. 

"Kyra, it was just too hard." 

Nothing uttered resembled even the words “goodbye.”

The one’s before them condemned my character and my sin.

The one’s before them left like a ghost.

And I’m haunted from the countless days spent with them laughing, loving, growing, believing. Those who had my undying loyalty, love, trust, gratitude, and support.

I overthink every lie that was told. Promises that were made and taken back. Cruel words said to you about yourself in the privacy of a figure in power with you, the person lesser than them.

Then the words, “I never said that. You’re making that up.” In front of a group of people who will not believe you.

They’ll lie about what they said and did. Then come things made up that you said and did that no one will believe never happened. Realizing you have no power. Against someone bigger than you. Someone bigger than you that was supposed to protect you. Men and women alike.

It's torture. 

Day in and day out. Trying to trust is torture.

You're desperate for the words "I'll always be there for you," and then you sit shaking in the night wondering if it's true once you hear them. 

They say it's not that deep. People tell you to just let things happen, be chill about it. You can't overthink it. That pushes people away.

How can't I? 

My whole past makes me question if any relationship is real.
While I have everything I could possibly ask for around me in friends and family, I still feel so lonely and isolated, knowing that any minute they too could walk away because it was "just too hard," and no one would blame them.  

How do you find secure attachment when you've never been securely attached? 

You tell those negative voices to leave you alone, you tell them they aren't true and you need to keep trying. And yet, they've been right before, so why shouldn't you believe them? 

When do you recover? Your heart aches on, day after day, silently.  But your broken heart rattles in your rib cage, causing bruises in your body that no one else can feel but you.

You can barely stand to have someone be there for you just remembering the last person who tried. And yet all you want is their warm embrace. You want it to be real, you want it to be safe. 

You push it away because you can't accept the same warmth that once turned to ice, freezing your heart. 

There were no signs until the very end. Or did I miss them all? I question every interaction I have now, looking for signs, and hoping these people communicate better than the last. Cursing every miscommunication and waiting for a fight that brings me back to square one. 

I don't fight for people any more. When it's over, it's over. I've learned when I'm not wanted. I used to beg and fight with my life, until I learned none of those people have kept me alive all this time. It's my own resilience. I question God, I question people, but I no longer question my resilience. 

We carry on, and strive to stay true to ourselves, and remember the one thing that will never change: no matter how people, including the people we love the most, treat us, we are inherently worthy of love. 

Jesus kept giving his heart no matter how often it was broken, to those who we knew would betray him, and became close to them even though he knew the betrayal was coming, for the sake of every human who needed his connection. He did it for me. 

I believe those moments in time were real, because they allow me to soften my heart when it's screaming at me to stay hard forever. 

While it may or may not stay hard, the holes will always be there. You may grieve in silence, but I’m here to tell you: I see you. No matter how long it’s been, I know your grief is still there, and that no one can replace your person. My heart is with you.