Erratic Heart

The familiar sweat that settles in each evening as I lie quietly on my bed has once again retuned. It has been a hot summer. A long summer, one that surprisingly, I am ready to see the end of. It has been a summer of sighs. A summer of exasperation. A summer of trying to decide where my life is going to go, and despite my many options, still coming up short. It is the summer which end marks a beginning. The beginning of an almost new chapter.

Sure, I'm still the same fickle girl I've always been. That unsteady, erratic heart of mine will never change. But the passion carried inside of it seems to shift as quickly as the time I feel passing over me.

Today my mind has borne the burden of a thousand different thoughts coupled with a million different emotions. Mine are the days of questions, wondering, pondering, hoping, deliberating, analyzing, orchestrating and illustrating. The days that all seem to end with a familiar sadness that has no name.

My summer is ending. The color of mornings filled with sunshine, afternoons full of editing and late night drives with my best friend will soon fade. The moments of secrets shared with a trusted confidant, long talks with a man, a father figure, dearer than anything to me and solitary walks to a green park down the road swirl through the forefront of my mind. Life has happened again. It has left me thoughtful, puzzled at times, yet the edges of my fickle life seem slightly less defined.

Is it vulnerability? For the first time in my life am I setting plans aside to truly live? Perhaps I've lied to my soul for the past few years. The life I thought I was leading is really just a vague shell of what had been constructed in my mind.

Regardless, my heart, my soul, my thoughts are all painfully vulnerable. And I don't know why.

Anger could have something to do with it. Anger at something broken long ago that despite my feeble attempts, can never be fully restored. A broken mess of exasperation that deep down I wouldn't have any other way. But coming to terms with our greatest fears that splinter off into a hundred more worries leaves me feeling stripped bare.

Days ago, weeks ago, months ago, I could feel the vulnerability silently creeping up behind me, with a stealth like presence. It would grip my heart ever so slightly, but the strength deep within that calloused organ would shake off any fear of control. But now, with a grip like a vice, a fear of surrender has taken root in the confines of the soul. The part burried deepest within that we often times don't find until years later.

Have I surrendered to my worries, my fears, my inability to mend the broken pieces of my life?

A small flicker of light inside prompts my thoughts to say no. No to surrender. No to defeat. No to removing the stones set firmly in place in the walls around my calloused heart.