Balloon animals in a blackberry bush
There are very few instances in life where you can isolate the sensations of a single body part. Like doing kegels, or getting an IUD put in and finding out with searing clarity the exact location of your uterus.
Every now and again, it’s the heart.
I remember the first time I noticed my heart as its own separate entity was back when my niece was born. I didn’t know what to expect, and wasn’t quite sure how things were going to work out. I’d had 24 years of being the youngest, and had taken it as a given that her arrival would somehow boot me out of the family.
That’s when I learned that the human heart is a cardholding member of the ‘ask for forgiveness, not permission’ club.
When my niece finally came, I noticed that my heart had built a sunroom. Instead of anybody getting ousted, my heart had just added an extension.
I hadn’t signed off on any plans, or even known that my sternum was under construction.
And I happen to be a total sucker for sunrooms.
“We don’t have to change the subject,” a friend told me.
It was a couple days after a breakup, and I’d switched topics after realizing I’d been going on about my ex for too long.
If my heart wasn’t numb, I’d probably have been touched by the kindness of her response. But at the time, everything was gray.
I tried to remind myself that “A heart that hurts is a heart that works.” It’s a phrase I’d consoled my mom with on a phone call earlier in the day.
It was easier to say in response to her problems. I liked the quote less when it applied to me.
“I think I’m jaded when it comes to love,” I told my therapist as we sat in opposite chairs, hers closest to the door.
She once told me this was so she could have a quick escape in case a patient got violent. I wasn’t sure if she was supposed to say that, but I guessed if she was letting me in on her get-away route, it meant she probably thought I was ok.
I had no plans for violence. I just wanted to figure out how my heart had gotten so many calluses, and how to get rid of them.
I told her I was skeptical how almost everyone I knew was getting married. Because logistically speaking there was no way that they had all genuinely met the person that they actually wanted to spend the rest of their lives with. And I couldn’t even find someone I was willing to tolerate for a second date.
“Is everyone else capable of love in some way that I’m just not,” I asked. “Or are they all just faking it?”
I can’t remember her response. But it was mostly a rhetorical question.
A few months later I sat in the same chair, my therapist close to the door, me close to the window, and I felt defensive when she asked me about the intimacy.
She was wearing an elaborate kimono and a beaded bracelet, and it felt like getting therapy from Esther Perel.
She is a good therapist and didn’t remind me how some months earlier I’d been complaining about being jaded. Instead she asked, “What does it feel like, this intimacy?”
I hesitated, reluctant to talk about it. I didn’t know how to explain that it felt like we were passing a baby bird back and forth between cupped hands.
“It feels sweet,” I tell her. I don’t mention the baby bird. “Tender,” I say.
I don’t add how I could feel the physical sensations of my heart growing as I lay in bed next to him. How it had gotten so warm and was growing so fast that I was a little worried. But I figured that hearts were probably self-regulating.
While I’ve bought many things from Farmacity, the nearest pharmacy, the most impactful purchase by far has been my shower cap. With the splurge of about an extra hundred pesos, I opted for a pink one with an inflatable crown on top.
It is the first thing I hide when company comes over.
But for the duration of every shower I am royalty.
It is of little significance that my water heater is the size of a single serving snack pack and leaves me shivering in the cold within minutes. And that I have to choose which body part to shave per shower.
What truly matters is that for a few moments every evening I look (and feel) like a princess.
I’m confident that this will have no meaning to anybody beyond myself. I recently shared it with a friend, and I could tell by her laugh that I was taking the metaphor a little too far. But she’s British, so she had to humor me.
However the first time I wore the shower cap, all I could think was that the inflatable crown on top was exactly how it feels to have a human heart.
Its comic optimism emphasized by my pale bare body.
Like balloon animals in a blackberry bush, everybody knows how it’s going to end. But we blow them up anyway, and we clap at the shape of a poodle, and we act surprised when they burst and we’re stuck picking latex off of thorns, because campsite rules.
When it comes to romantic love, I have a 100% failure rate.
My IUD has more than a 99% effectiveness rate, and that 1% is enough to keep me up at night with psychosomatic pregnancy symptoms. Even though my bacon craving always turns out to be just a bacon craving.
It makes no rational sense for the heart to keep opening up.
And yet, isn’t that love in a microcosm? Shivering naked in the cold with a fantastic shower cap holding out hope for something that’s never happened before.
But I didn’t know that hearts could build sunrooms, or have non-consensual growth spurts. So I turn on the tap, and brace myself, and wonder if maybe this time there'll be enough hot water to shave both legs in a single go.