Something that belongs to someone else

I am, once again, trying to get back to writing daily, so I cracked open my A Writer's Book of Days for some inspiration. Today, I write about "something that belongs to someone else."

The first thing that comes to my mind is my heart. Throughout my life, I feel like it's almost uncomfortable for me to have ownership of my heart. I give it away too freely sometimes and I've certainly had it returned in a million pieces. Right now, I feel pretty safe with the person who has it. He wouldn't frivolously toss it aside or do anything careless. It was definitely handed to him cautiously, and covered in band-aids. Every once in a while one of those band-aids loosen and I get scared. I worry about it breaking again because I feel like it's pretty close to having it's last punch so I try to build a wall around it or take it back, but he soothes my heart and mends those tricky wounds.

My friend Jamey put together a show a couple of years ago with artists in all different mediums. There was one scene that has really stayed with me. There were no words, just music and a man and a woman. They both wore a beautiful heart made of metal wires with long pieces of yarn hanging from it on their chest. As they portrayed "falling in love" they would attach one of their yarn strings to the other persons heart. Then, as so often happens, they started to grow apart. The actors moved farther apart in distance, stretching the heart strings to their limit. Finally, one of the actors took scissor and cut right through the strings, eliminating any attachment they had to one another. It was heartbreaking and elegant.

We build connections to each others hearts and sometimes it's really hard to detach. For some, it's easy to just cut right through those connections . . . for others (like me) it takes a long time to detach the strings, one by one, and let it go.

My heart belongs to someone else. He knows who he is. I hope he is as careful with it as I am with his because his is pretty tattered and beaten up too. Maybe that's how we ended up feeling safe enough to let someone else in again, who knows. I'm just glad that I'll never give up trusting there will be someone to take care of it forever.