Here

“Oh, I use “May I be patient, may I be I be strong, may I be kind to myself” pretty often. I like the rhythm of it.”

“That’s a good one.”

“I saw you have another one written on your mirror. What was it?”

“Fear is the mind-killer. I write it on my arm when I’m doing open water swims, too.”

“Isn’t that from Dune?”

“Yup.”

“You’re a weird girl.”

* * *

Everything feels muffled.

My husband has just told me he wants a divorce. While I’m at work. Over text message.

In the coming months I’ll spend a lot of time wondering what I did to deserve this. Surely I didn’t marry the kind of person who ends a four year relationship and a two year marriage via text. I must have done something wrong. Yes, that’s it. This was my fault. I did something to deserve this.

Nearly a year out, I still don’t understand how it happened, but I know that I didn’t deserve it.

What I do understand is how at that moment I felt myself slam something down over my heart.

“No,” I told it. “We don’t have time to fall apart now.”

I don’t remember a lot about the rest of that day. It was like being deeply sleep deprived. Or drunk. I’m reasonably certain I worked out. I know I finished the project I was working on before I went home. I remember that the muffled feeling took awhile to wear off.

When it comes to brain vs. heart, my brain is almost never in control. It spends the rest of the day asserting itself in time with its own beat.

I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.

* * *

“I know it seems like a silly exercise, but for someone who is perennially hard on themselves, it’s an important one.”

I groan. “Fine. I have grit.”

“What else?”

“I’m bright. I’m articulate when I’m not nervous. I’m adventurous.”

When she asks a chirpy “Anything else?” I remind myself that I am paying to be here.

“I care. A lot. All the time, actually. About everyone.”

“Yes. Warm-hearted. And open-hearted. Neither of those are bad things.”

I think about the jar over my heart and its quiet insistence that it exists.

I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

* * *

In the months after the ex leaves me, I reach for everything.

I meditate. I reread my favorite books. I stop drinking and start exercising and eat more vegetables. I belt out my favorite musicals alone in my apartment. I write down things that feel like they’re helping. I consider getting them tattooed on my body and immediately put a one-year moratorium on any permanent body alteration.

Impossibly, I start dating again.

Somewhere in the midst of it, my protected heart finally breaks. And I keep it covered.

“No,” I tell it. “It doesn't matter how handsome or funny they are.We’re going to keep you here forever.”

* * *

I’m laughing so hard I can’t breathe.

It’s late and I should be asleep, but I’m up texting and a dumb play on words has set me off.

Life has been like this for a little while. It came on so gradually that I didn’t realize what was happening. I’ve stopped needing to meditate for an hour before bed to fall asleep. I’ve started reading again. While I’m still working out, but not frenetically, twice a day.

I find myself up late, texting and laughing.

One of my goals for myself during my divorce was to come through it with my warm heart still intact. I made that goal even after I secreted it away and told myself no one would ever get to see it again. It sounds contradictory, but I think even as I was falling apart I knew (believed, maybe) that it would happen.

I’m still surprised by how swiftly it did. Handsome and funny with a smart mouth certainly helped, but it's been more than that. Time, likely. Good friends, too. I won't lie, a few liberal applications of gin and jazz standards probably helped me along as well.

What shocks me more than the swiftness is how ready my heart is to try again, even when I know that things probably aren't going to work. It keeps asserting itself over and over again.

I’m here.

I’m here.

I’m here.