divorce – A Mama's Blog

I am participating in BlogHer’s Valentine’s Day 2009 event, Letter To My Heart. My letter below also appears on BlogHer, and you can read all the letters here.

From BlogHer Describing Letter to My Heart: With “Letter to My Heart,” BlogHer is inviting women to share stories about love, loss, relationships, romance and, yes, even Valentine’s Day. Love isn’t easy, and it takes so many forms.

Dear Heart,

I have never written a letter to you before, so it is long overdue.

Where do I start? What could I possibly write to you about love that you don’t already know? You may know everything about love, but I don’t.

My first memories of love were from my parents and my siblings. I didn’t realize it was love- it just felt nice, and warm, and it felt like everything was right in the world. No one else but my mom would do, when I was sick. No one else but my dad would do when I wanted a story read, and no one else but my brother and sisters would do as my closest friends (and sometimes tormentors).

As a family, we knew what buttons to push with each other but we also knew deep down, underneath it all, we loved each other fiercely. Even though there were disagreements and arguments, I knew there was nothing that would ever come between us permanently. Family is where love started for me.

As I grew older and grew up- I also learned I could love my friends too. Again, everything felt right in the world with true friends. As I continued growing and romantic love came into play, well, that is where it started getting tricky. I know you remember, Heart. Who doesn’t remember their loves? From their first love to the one they believe with all of their heart, will be their last love? I am no different and I remember them. But, I also remember all the complications too.

Why are there always complications? Why is love so difficult? Why isn’t it enough to just love someone, and have them love you back? What do you do when you realize the love you thought you would have forever is gone? What do you do when you know you are not loved anymore? What do you do when the lines have been crossed- between love and hate- gentle and hurt- praise and criticism- and there is no chance of ever going back to that time before the lines were crossed? What do you do when you realize you have been broken, Heart?

I know I have to answer these questions for myself. I started to allow myself to listen to you, and acknowledge my feelings. I became strong enough to feel what you were telling me through the silence. When I trusted myself enough Heart, you gave me the answers. The answers that had always been there, but I had forgotten how to find them.

This is why I wanted to write you finally after all these years, Heart. I think I am starting to understand. Love certainly has not worked out the way I planned or wanted it to. But the family and friends that have been there from the beginning, have.

Nothing, especially love, is certain or is forever, no matter how much I want it to be. But, Heart, you know and have guided me to the place where I need to be. For strength, for comfort, and to heal- back to the beginning. To my family and friends, where I can always find those early memories of love- nice warm, and as if everything was right in the world. It is where love started and where it will always be.

Love,

Heather

The other day I was looking through a storage bin of things I have had since childhood. I think most people have bin or box like this.

In mine there are yearbooks, pictures- lots of pictures, I never got around to putting in picture books, programs of the plays I had been in, newspaper articles I wrote for the high school paper, the piccolo I used to play. My coin collection. A customized Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs book my mother ordered for me when I was probably six- where my name and the things I liked were written into the story, helping Snow White.

I sat there thinking it was odd, after all the years in school, all the people that have come in and out of my life, the things that I found important at one point or another, I had kept, and put in this bin- this bin that has been buried in the back of a closet for almost two decades.

I got to the bottom of the bin and found a folder. In that folder were poems I had written. I never remembered writing poems, but I had signed my name at the bottom of the poems and dated them. They were from 1991. The year I graduated from high school. Eighteen years ago- they were the last things I had arranged in the bin. I was eighteen, and had just had my heart broken.

The poems I wrote, were of course about heartbreak. But I noticed while they were sad, like any eighteen year-old girl’s poem would be, I ended them with optimism. I knew it wasn’t the end-even though it felt like that. I knew over the years, I had been losing that optimism that things would always be okay, one way or another. Every day, it slipped further and further away- and I felt like there was nothing I could do to change it.

There are moments in life when we know we have to change. We know if we don’t, we will be lost forever. We can’t change other people no matter how much we love them, want them to change, try to change them, or beg them to change. In the end, we can only change ourselves. Change is hard. Sometimes it is the hardest thing ever to do. There is a quote by Henry David Thoreau which says, “Things do not change, we change.”

As I rustled through the papers, I found one last poem. A poem that I did not write, but found very insightful among the few items I had chosen to keep from my past. I don’t remember where I got this poem, or even copying it from a book. It was in my handwriting, but I had noted at the time, the author was unknown. It is deeper and more profound than an eighteen year-old’s broken heart. Perhaps this was a poem I wanted to keep for myself, from my past, if I ever needed help facing the future. Here is that poem:

Comes The Dawn

After awhile you learn
the subtle difference
between holding a hand
and chaining a soul.
And you learn that love
doesn’t mean leaning,
And company doesn’t mean security.

And you begin to learn
that kisses aren’t contracts
and presents aren’t promises.
And you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up
and your eyes open.
With the grace of a woman,
not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build
all your roads on today
because tomorrow’s ground
is too uncertain for plans,
And futures have a way
of falling down in mid-flight.

After awhile you learn
that even sunshine burns
if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul.
Instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.

And you learn
that you really can endure…
That you really are strong.
That you really do have worth.
And you learn and learn…

With every goodbye…
you learn.