I Gave My Heart Scissors

Note:  I wrote this before Christmas but only published it after the fact.  It was a particularly rough time which the tone of the post will indicate.  It is still a difficult time but one foot forward, a step at a time, right?

______________________________________________________________________

"And I am feeling so small
It was over my head
I know nothing at all

[...]

And I will swallow my pride
You're the one that I love
And I'm saying goodbye"
- A Great Big World


There is a quote that says "Music is what feelings sound like."

I can not disagree.

My best writing is done when I am not writing at all; during moments of solitude when a lyric resonates, its frequency swathing the cortex and muffling the world.  The song fades into the background as the letters of the envisioned script pepper my mind, clumping into words and finishing in a piquant of a sentence, a paragraph, a page.  And like pepper, they often bring a tear to the eye.

The tears are not simply memories that longed for freedom but they are also a representation of moments that will never be, or are no longer, and for a perceived future that has drastically deviated off course.  I am a puppet to my emotions, animated by invisible heart strings that I am powerless to ignore.  These are mine to own, to grow with and to learn from but that doesn't make them any less debilitating.  They seem to be more adamant and difficult to quell with every twinkle of Christmas lights, with every snowflake, with every Christmas song.

And it's in the air, isn't it?  Christmas.  Tidings float on the wind, get-togethers occur indoors to keep the chill out and the most common thing I hear is that I must finally be happy.  The reply I never give is that I traded one happiness for another.  I was not unhappy then and I am not truly happy now.  There is just too much letting go that needs to happen and a part of me wishes to hold on in order to not forget.  Thankfully, the mind is not an etch-a-sketch that can just be shook to erase the memories; I don't want to forget the love, the laughter, the friendship, the joy.  I want to remember those in my new happiness; I just need to fill in the hurt.

So I gave my heart scissors to rid itself of the invisible puppeteer; and the permission to beat to a new song.

"Only know you love her when you let her go

And you let her go"

- Passenger