Resilience..

The maze of feeling, in which the heart is the map and the mind cannot read it precisely but can’t stop trying, that is where my journey of moving on is crafted out of: trying and failing and trying again and failing again. Therapy, however, is still a battleground, with the maps of the past still salvaged from rubble, still held in my dry palm, because each time I go to therapy, each pill, extra pill, each counselling session, is still a storm that seems to have no end in sight.

The city, the frame within which the phantasmagorical dreams and the murmurs of commitment played themselves out, has long since become the screen upon which the memories of that life continually appear. The urban geography seems to be animated by the composites of every panorama and every olfactory sensation that I have encountered in the city, and was once an integral part of.

But, the feeling died an early death, leaving pieces of broken dreams and remnants of what could have been, even as I am unable to let go and my heart remains shrouded by an aura of what was.
Heartbreak, it deprives the body of its dreams, forges the soul: of steel; galvanising, labouring and sculpting a fortress, not desiring, but capable of weathering storms; and it has. I stand testament to that iron produced in the caldron of desire.

But, there is also a crack in all of this bravado. It is what lies underneath the resilience. It is the chink in the armour that not even my impressive armoury against the pain could possibly eclipse. I have been fighting for a long time.  I have won many battles. But occasionally, the armour fails and the pain pours through.

The streets, where I once walked beside someone, make up a melancholy cartography of those days: when we turned a corner, when we met at an intersection, or walked beside one another silently contemplating love or death, released from the everyday routine and temptations. There are the ghosts of the past that refuse to remain as ghosts.

Once, love was like a light blazing out of the darkness of my dank little heart, or so I thought, when death was a mere parenthesis between the full stops of love. Time, however, has proven responsive to situations, cruel in its verdicts, and pragmatic in what it decides to destroy.
And, so my work goes on digging through the remains of decades past, pursuing that faint light that shines on some horizon, hoping to find, in the patient, hopeful stretch of my days, some trace of that which still lives within.
But, in the midst of the darkness, from time to time, the clouds break, and my heart softens into unexpected pulses of joy and laughter. Such moments of respite are imbued with the purest forms of healing, those halcyon moments of acceptance, forgiveness and loving kindness that evolve gradually over time.

Each therapy session is not just a warzone, but a laboratory of self: a space in which to lay out my scars, where I might learn to heal seriously. Each pill is swallowed not to drown in oblivion but to prove I am not weak; and so I muster the grit to carry on.
Therapy sessions go from being the place I end up when there is no longer any hope, to becoming life rafts of counsel: beacons of light, wisdom of experience and empathy of shared experience, in a time of great need. When someone listens, it makes the pain a little less painful, and the sorrow a little less burden.

But, maybe the deepest revelation is this: to move on is not to forget; it is not an act of erasure but an act of integration, of weaving, a bringing together of past and present, pain and joy, loss and growth, of the memories that once threatened to drown me now shining like stars, a gentle light: the love I once knew, the strength I now have.

Heartbreak might be only one thread in my life’s tapestry, but heartbreak treads a pathway through this tapestry, it has left its imprint upon it, upon the very fabric that makes up my life. But, it is not the biggest thread, it is not my destiny’s end. Because, heartbreak brings with it its own promise: that the beautiful alone will come afterwards, love will come afterwards.
Thus, for what it is worth, to the extent that I continue to walk this path and the path keeps going, I walk. I walk through heartbreak and through healing. I walk from the rubble of what once was. And when what is no more exists, there is always an opportunity for the once and future. I hold space for that, for the seed of the deep knowing that grows back into the earth and is tended to as something new again. I hold space for the pain. It’s bitter at times, sharp at others. I sit fully with it and recognise that I am not okay.

The pain is not going anywhere and that is hard for me to sit with. I hold space for when the pain makes me feel lonely and mistreated. I hold space for when the pain puts prickly life in my path and reminds me of slicing blades and jagged edges. I hold space for when the pain causes me to question existence and navigate fears. And, in all of that I try to walk in my body, with my limbs, through discomfort and in-between. I rest for a while and then I get back up. I keep walking because, at the end of the tunnel, there is light. I keep walking because I have done this before and have been fine. I keep walking because I am not alone.

And in the night, when the world sleeps, and the stars speak their secrets to the moon, when no other heartbeat is heard except that of mine, I feel the sound of my own heart, the beating of my resilience, the song of hope. In the dark there is always light, and in despair there is always love, and though the pain will beat like a heart in the wounds, and I will shed my tears, I will not be broken. Somehow, I will withstand. Resilience will burn like a fire in the soul, lighting my way through the darkness.