Sometimes when my heart is breaking and I just want the hurt to stop I consider...
....quitting.
....shutting down.
....giving up.
....going away.
Do you think that would make the hurt stop?
But then I remember that life will break me...
....shatter me.
....crush my dreams.
....destroy my hope.
....crack my heart wide open.
Being alone won't fix that. Solitude will leave me yearning...
....aching for love.
....longing for company.
....craving a touch.
....pining for you.
And so I love deeply...
....and freely.
....with passion.
....body and soul.
....giving my whole heart.
I risk everything...
....trusting.
....being vulnerable.
....sharing myself.
....facing rejection.
This love I have swallows me whole...
....leaving me lost.
....feeling exposed.
....alone with my fears.
....facing my wounds.
Inevitably heartache comes again and again and again...
....when I am betrayed.
....when the storms of life hit.
....when hurt snatches the breath from my body.
....when I am left alone in the dark of the night.
It is there, alone in the dark, with tears on my face, I remember the apples.
I tasted all the fucking apples...
....oh the sweetness.
...the juice dripping off my chin.
....the crunch of each bite.
....right down to the core.
I ate apples with abandon.
I went on adventures. I swam naked in the ocean under the stars. I climbed mountains and spun in circles with my arms stretched out wide. I held babies moments after they were born. I held the hand of the dying. I danced under disco lights. I rescued baby turtles and collected pretty rocks.
I loved and loved and loved some more. I loved without restraint, young and old, strangers became friends, became beloved. I was not afraid to eat all the apples. Truly, I tasted as many as I could. That has to be enough.
"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could."
~Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum
