Part 1: The Eruption
It was broken, my heart that is, before it could break of its own accord. Almost before I hear these words my heart laps up a knowing recognition. It does that my heart, given the space and it’s hunger. These words are already repairing the rupture of decades. They are words spoken by Jungian Psychotherapist Donald Kalshead. I only came across his work recently as a reference in a journal I was reading about voice and trauma1. Donald is one my more recent guides who I have installed into my healing hall of fame. He drips with the same compassion integrity and concern that others in the guild have given to me.
Heartbreak. Cracks before the dawn shutting down openness. The world and I are worn and weary and awake. The world’s game came thundering in with no time to protect, no time to address, no time or light to survey and navigate the rubble. me and remove all live in step among the wreckage in the dark. Innocence meant a lack of preparation for the violent disruption. Unseen but lodged in stealth with the weight of lead. A silent, steady, complete and continual erasure and wipe of the horizon just being a horizon. I was breaking into parts and pieces inside unable to speak it or show. Somehow I knew how important I was to the whole show to be quiet. I didn’t know the word acquiescence but I wore it. That along with my smile and nod became my arsenal. The joy and love I arrived with in spades deployed as rafts to survive and cover. This restriction had a double edge. My heart as it’s want, still dreamed and hungered but something within me had learned that the possibilities of horizons couldn’t be lived, let alone entertained, less so traversed. The twins of unquenched and unending longing remained. Longings I could still smell, snuffed out by doubts and questions.
My heart didn’t break on its own terms. My heart was bound by duty, commissioned by safety to be fully aware and alert to what I needed to be for others. Contained by the need to be reasonable, appropriate and acceptable. Not that I dared, but anything resembling adventure, agency or anger would’ve brought attention and subsequent annihilation.
My heart didn’t break on its own terms. Heartbeats measured to fear, fueled by an imagination seeking out every potential danger. Heartbeats that couldn’t be named, carried within to march behind an imagination in overdrive.
Coming soon: Heartbreak Part II – The Reckoning