Too much snow can break your house, can break your heart

There is a cluster of vessels that lay dormant in your heart

Serving only to act in an emergency

They’re on standby, waiting patiently until they are needed.  Quiet crusaders.  Your body’s fight or flight.

Then, when there’s a trauma, they pulse, join with a network of nearby vessels and grow, flush with blood and pump, and move, furiously, fevered, they fight through the blockage, the damage, the hurt.  It’s collateral circulation.

A safety net, an internal community of freedom fighters waiting to push through.  Your body’s fight or flight/

I’ve been trying to understand love, and I have no idea how this thing works

I used to be a hopeless romantic, believing in love against all odds, through any heartbreak, through the betrayals and the sorrow, the loneliness, and pain, against my better judgment, and at times with severe naivety, I believed love would prevail.  In my email, my outgoing message for years has read, “the heart is a muscle the size of your fist.  Keep loving.  Keep fighting.”  Fight or flight.  I chose fight. But somewhere, amidst the repetition of the brutal hurt that we cause each other, I lost sight.  The vessels in my chest, my mighty soldiers, locked down, surrendered. 

She asked, “Where do you say you’re from now?”  She, a childhood friend I hadn’t seen in many years. Me, self-convinced that when I left, I wasn’t fleeing. After years of distance, we were under the same roof again.  “When people ask you where you’re from, what do you tell them?” She persisted.  She wanted to know where I saw home.  The place I lived for 18 years, where I grew up, was trapped in layers of secrets built upon lies built upon secrets built upon lies.  The place I lived the following 18, where I grew up, freed into open skies and endless tree lines, with room to breathe and think and breathe and think and breathe.  Fight. Flight? Where are you from now?

I looked into my father’s eyes, my eyes, a mirror almost doubled in time.  How do I do this?  Cancer cells have taken residence in your blood.  Invaders, small and reserved, they are on standby, waiting patiently to attack when ready.  You are ever stoic and brave, you do what the doctor says.  You cut out dairy and gluten.  You stop drinking soda because cancer feeds on sugar.  You keep pushing as though there is no war in your body.  Keep loving. Keep fighting?   How?

A cluster of vessels lay dormant in your heart, serving only to act in an emergency.  

I have no conclusion, no resolution, no discovery.  I am clueless.   But I know this: We are here for a short time. Find something to love, and if it feels right, go for it.  You can lose many races waiting until the end to put on a burst of speed.

The heart is a muscle the size of your fist.