On Discovering a Connection

I said somewhere, sometime, in a post (I think) that I want to work on working out of my heart as much as I work out of my brain. I am pleased to announce that I have discovered a bridge between the two.

Here in the town where I live they have been working on building a new road. I feel like they've been building it for almost as long as I've lived here. They continue to toil away.  I had imagined that finding my brain-heart connection would be a lot like trying to get that road built. I had imagined that I would have to excavate for a few years before I found something that even looked like a beaten path between the two.

Well.... indeed, there is a bridge. It's a tentative one, kind of like an overgrown rope bridge over a foggy gorge....but it's there and so far it's able to bear my weight for brief forays to the other side.

I discovered something a couple of weeks ago when I was exploring "my heart side". For years I have believed the lie that I'm heartless. I believed I didn't have the capacity to love. I've not given any weight to my own feelings. I'm pretty stingy with any emotion but anger. I express that one with practiced ease. I'm the girl who doesn't cry at movies, or ever (with rare exceptions). I always thought that's how I was born. I discovered, though, a "heart side" chock-full of feelings and emotions. Some of them are encased in dust. I will need to do some cleaning. There are also lots of shiny new ones. It was a pretty fun discovery.

So many years of my life have been spent literally and figuratively alone with myself. I realized that I've been walking around numb. I had claimed the "heartless" lie. I was willfully living as if it were true. I locked myself inside that cold, hard lie and swallowed the key. Now that the walls have fallen and my heart is thawing I am beginning to feel things. I'm feeling a range of things. It's good.