Even after all this time, even after everything … my heart can still skip a beat. Isn’t it funny, too, how it actually feels like your heart skips a beat? Like a little physical flutter of excitement – a pause, and then a speeding-up. The physiological response of emotion. Like “heartache“. The heart actually hurts when it is broken. This is not a revelation, by any means. Smarter people than yours truly have recognized that. I often wonder about it, though. I don’t wonder about it at 3:30 in the morning AS I’m pressing down on my chest, trying to ease the ache in my heart – an ache that feels REAL – the emotions are what is real, the experiential reality is what is actually going on – but still. The heart actually hurts. What is that? The pain does seem to come from the region of the heart, which is truly amazing, if you think about it. It’s just an organ. But so much emotion goes on in there. Pain and joy emanate from that area of the chest. Remarkable.
And after all this time, after all the heartACHE, it is amazing to learn that the heart can still skip a beat. It hasn’t forgotten.
After my mother died (I was 17), I felt heartache for the first time, moment by moment, day by day, for at least a year afterward. Grandma, who lived next door and was understandably destroyed by her daughter’s death, would say to me, “My heart is broken,” and she would crush a sofa pillow into her breasts and sob. To me, it felt like an emptiness – an organ missing, a hollow space about the size of a bowling ball, and just as black and heavy. It was surprisingly akin to the sensation of an empty stomach, so I started unconsciously shoveling in food to quell the ache. I had a ham and cheese sandwich from a vending machine in the hospital not 45 minutes after mom died. I remember staring at the TV in the waiting room and stuffing my mouth while tears streamed down my face, like a child having a tantrum on the playground who’s momentarily mollified by an ice cream cone. Desperate for distraction, distraction as self-medication.
A year of filling an empty heart with food didn’t work, of course, except to make me fatter, but to this day I sometimes mistakenly feed a heartache or, conversely, interpret a hunger pang as a disquieting sadness. I must’ve crossed the synapses in that brain quadrant all those years ago.
xx
Stevie –
Oh, how wonderful it is to hear from you again. A beautiful and insightful comment, as ever. Your honesty helps me to be honest.
The image of your grandmother crushing a pillow to her chest brought tears to my eyes.
The human heart isn’t indestructible but it is amazingly resilient – often moreso than we believe, especially when it’s freshly wounded.
Loss feels like an emptiness to me as well, Stevie. Eventually, a significant part of that empty space can be reclaimed. The void will never completely disappear, but it can become less prominent over time. And the heart does retain its ability to be thrilled, to occasionally skip a beat at the sight of something wondrous…
I lost my father about 15 years ago. I don’t hurt anymore, but I still miss him every day. And it’s worth it to have had such a great dad.
And something else that amazes me (although not at the time) is that when one’s heart is aching it does so first thing upon awakening, before the reason for its aching is even remembered. So was it aching all night, even during sleep?
diana – Ack. You’re so right.
And after all this time, after all the heartACHE, it is amazing to learn that the heart can still skip a beat. It hasn’t forgotten.
Never does.
//Never does.//
Nope. Don’t buy it. People’s hearts die all the time.
Beautiful.