Seventeen

I think when your heart breaks it's like irreversible damage.

“Meddy, when you get older one leg'll get shorter than the other. You’re gonna need a cane and in a year probably a brace. Ain’t fixable but your just gonna learn to live with it.”

That was what Nurse Nathanson said to me in fifth grade. Sometimes I wonder if she was actually describing the inevitable evil of heart break instead of my Scoliosis diagnosis. Maybe they should warn you about the horrible devistation of love at the age of 10. Maybe that way you can have years of preparation and make a rational decision on whether its all really worth it.

But is love really ever rational? You see what you want to see, hear what you want to hear. Do you ever look at someone and say, "Hey! you look like a big bag of disfunction, come on! Lets do this... for a really long time." No, no you don't. Because even the most disfunctional is always the most tempting. I think what we seek out in others is merely a reflection of what we are most unsettled with in ourselves. I know because I have spent years running from what I have not wanted to face most. Myself.

I remember when it first happened. It's like this lead weight that sits on your heart and you walk with it. It stays there. Sometimes I wonder if it's disappeared but I think thats just the adjustment. Adjusting to its heaviness. That’s what it feels like with a broken heart. I was 17 when it first happened, then I was 18, then I was 19, 20 , 21, 22, 23, 24. You’d think by that time I would learn. Learn that this weight doesn’t suit me, that this agonizing pain is becoming me. Plaguing each part of me. I just want to cut it off. Run away. Just get so far away. Where no one even knows me. So I do.

I moved half way across the world. No one did know me. I was at the end of my trip sitting on the beach in Fiji. I was alone. And I remember sitting there thinking, I really don't like myself. I have lived so much of my life as a "good kid". Done so many things out of fear. Fear of failure, rejection, judgement. Who is this person? I'm not sure I know her anymore.

Somehow I had managed to stay 17 for 7 years. Avoiding the inevitable reality of life; You grow up.

People make mistakes. People do crazy things. People fall in love.
Hearts break.