The Love of This Heart Once Chosen
Life has a funny way of bringing up things long buried or lost at sea. Material or memory, there are feelings, moments, loves, and losses that make the best and worst of us. Rarely named, they are often our most unspoken truths.
Perhaps we dredge some of them up because we moored them to our souls too long ago, and others we unearth because we never laid them to rest properly. How many versions of myself have I been? How many do I hold in bitter unrest instead of grieving them and letting them go gracefully? Looking back now, I wonder what things laid in the deep of the people who raised me. How many hopes and hurts made the foundation of my childhood home? How many do I still carry with me?
I watched my mother take care of her mother growing up. How that experience brought them closer together. My grandmother survived leukemia, but lost her right leg and needed help at the end of the day with phantom pains. There they were, two of the strongest women I knew, tending to a leg that didn’t exist anymore except in my grandmother’s mind.
I think about that from time to time, how real the pain was. How my grandmother never complained and muscled through the rest of her life without being able fully lean on her right leg. I think about how she wasn’t bitter, but was still in pain. How she lived everyday without something she spent her whole life depending on. How she made it look effortless, but I knew how much she fought for us to live as normally as possible. I think about how much of life is like that. I also think about how much I am my mother’s daughter, and how she also was her mother’s daughter. How much of my learning to hold pain, taught me to hold it. How much my mother taught me how to be, by simply being.
I still remember my mother working late into the early morning. I would wake up to get a glass of water just to have an excuse to check on her. She never complained. Single, immigrant mom– a seemingly tired story. It was there, it was then, I taught myself not to be a burden. It seemed the only way I could take care of her as well, to become something she could worry just a little less about. Now into my adulthood, I still check on her in the early morning hours. As I listen to her struggle for air as she sleeps, I realize I am still that little girl who taught herself out of needs. I realize I am a woman who doesn’t cry when she is hurt, disappointed, or sad. Even knowing what it costs me now, it still feels a small kind of sacrifice to care for her that way. I watch her furrow her brow, knowing she holds so many voiceless hurts, and it makes me wonder if she ever named her pains. For me, I call this pain my mycelial phase.
This is the pain of interning my love and letting it reach out and strengthen the network of all my other loves hoping it will also find the centre of myself. I pray it would nourish the forest of memories in me, even the ones that ruined me. Perhaps that is the hallmark of trauma. Even in my pain, holding space for broken things having lost so much already. As pretty as I make it sound, this is a pain that lives and breathes with deaded things. It is a part of me that still sleeps in the dark umber of loss. It is the pain, as I have mentioned, of tying myself to things that are maybe buried for good reason. Yet, nature shows us that the shadow work nourishes us and grows us. I have learned pain can be both a teacher and a friend.
I wish I knew why there are memories we claw desperately to hold onto. Incandescent ones you clutch so tightly that they snag, and run, and frey in your mind. Fragile and beautiful, like lace. My grandmother holding me in her lap while she prayed the rosary, camping trips with my family before my parents were divorced, the smell of my mother’s hair on her pillow before she got sick – these are the ones I work to repair and preserve. The ones I am scared I will lose to time. My last memories of unadulterated, everyday happinesses. My earliest vestiges of what I called safety.
Instead, it is moments like that night that stay somehow. Hiding from my aunt in a closet while she was angry, my dad in his road rage driving through oncoming traffic, that night I begged them to stop. The scars on my legs are faded now from that strict discipline, small raised lines only discernible if you touch the soft skin on the back of my leg. Yet my heart still races and my hands tremor when I think of the metal side of that belt hitting my skin. Why is it the terror that does the clutching to us? These moments that ripped me apart so thoroughly I needed to stitch and restitch myself just to hold me together, are the ones I cannot seem to lose. I replay them over and over like picking at an old scab or unpicking a stitched repair. I never thought a break up, would rank as a trauma in my life. Though, I suppose divorce is different.
A song plays, or I see him favorite food and I am aware he is missing from me. Then suddenly, I am in that room again. I smell the damp night waft in from the garden as my cheeks grow warm. I watch as the words fall from his mouth so deadly & carelessly onto our bed. He didn’t know if he loved me anymore, he didn’t know how long he had not been in love with me. In ten minutes, undoing two decades of a life I had known, breaking foundations of the home that we shared.
I wrote this letter for myself that night:
To my once, and former love,
I can not sleep. Listless as I am, moving through this tired house in this weary way. I think I fear closing my eyes and finding my world changed. I fear that if I drift off to sleep you’ll drift farther away from me. And yet, are you not already gone? Are you not already out of reach that I ca not touch your heart? Have I not already lost you?
My mind races and retraces the barely tangible memories from a warm and distant time. Where your smile belonged to me, where I was your heart’s true desire. I feel the possibility of oblivion creeping to wash over me. It may take me to a place the me I am may not be able to return from.
I have been watching you this past week. Even your body language speaks of me and us in a muted past tense. My heart aches, as it tries in vain to reach out for you. And yet, again I ask… are you not already gone?
I suspend myself in this ineffable despair. That my love, my life, my soul’s mate was so stealthily taken from me by this thief in the night. Or rather… that you stole yourself away from me.
I portion myself out through the week, another me, another offering at the a alter of you. You, turning into someone unworthy of me. Me transforming into someone who is lesser for you. Though I know my own worth… my love has no purchase in your heart. Our future owns no currency in your mind.
I grow tired but sleep abates. I puzzle out how you can hold the righteousness of your choices like a cleaver to hack away at the pieces of our life. How different it could have been if your heart had done some cleaving of its own… to mine.
Is there anything left of me to heal from such a trauma? Is there anything left to dream of if I find a way into sleep? I cannot fall asleep my love. I cannot bear to wake to find my world remade afresh. I cannot bear to fall asleep in a meadow and awake in a graveyard.
I’m here, clawing my way back into existence. I cannot reach you. Have I not already lost you?
Though my heart is thoroughly broken, I know I still want him to have joy, know kindness, live his purpose, be content, and hold love, even without me. I want him to know that I believe that he deserves love. A revelation to me was that his careless words still could not undo my care for him. I know something then that he could not see then. Love, deep love, is a choice. Perhaps he did not choose to love me somewhere along the course of our life together. Perhaps he never loved me past a feeling or an idea, past infatuation and comfort and care. We do not have words for all the different kinds of love. Nothing to encapsulate and communicate their varied ways and beauty. In the time he and I shared, I have held all the many kinds, and loved all the many ways. Romances that start in childhood are like that. For me, marriage is simply choosing to love all the many versions of someone. Love is not turning away; it is courage in seeing people soberly as they grow and change. It is the painful grief of saying goodbye to versions you will miss, and welcoming new versions.
That night, I saw in his eyes that he wanted to love me but he couldn’t. Instead of anger and dejection, I saw his pain and all I felt was love. For the first time I let someone go gracefully. It made me realize that he couldn’t give me something that he could not give himself. He said he didn’t understand how I could love him, because it didn’t feel like I needed him. He couldn’t understand that I needed him because I loved him, and that I didn’t love him because I needed something from him. I learned then that people teach you how they were treated. That in needing so desperately to be understood, they make you feel how they felt at one point. For him, somewhere he learned you needed to earn love.
In destroying my heart with a trauma I maybe will never fully heal from, that moment gave me a clarity for so many other past hurts. It helped me to let go of so many shoulds and couldn’ts, and to have compassions for the ares and weres that I saw as not being enough. Maybe I needed more, maybe that was all they or life had to give. Maybe like myself, they grew up in difficult and chaotic homes, but unlike me they did not know what safe felt like. So losing him, and loving him, also taught me to forgive.
I forgive my aunts and uncles, my father, and family friends who mistreated me. I forgive all the women who disowned me because I did not fit into a type they understood. I forgive all the people who took my innocence. I forgive death for taking those I love from me. Lastly, I forgive all my many past selves who did their best in their growing and becoming. Those, also, who did not always give me enough love or put me first or even second. And the version of me that abandoned me by saying yes, when I meant no. The versions of me that pushed myself too hard in the name of unworthy things. I forgive you, but more than that, I love you.
This is the last letter I wrote from that time. I reread it again in this journey, and found that in loving him so deeply, my path for how to love myself was made clear. I meant it for him, but now I read the words and know I also wrote them for myself. I titled the email:
My lasts gifts before it’s over.
Before I go, before you go my love.
Let me leave this here.
Let me leave some of the love we found, to keep you warm and safe to remind you that you are loved, to remind you who you are, to remind you all that we were once. I hope it clings to the walls of your heart with such vibrant quality to make you brave in love. Whomever that may be. I pray it helps you understand… that not only are you worthy of love…that you’re worthy of loving.
Let me leave my faith in you. That you are strong, and courageous, and faithful. That whatever path you walk down, it will not be alone. He will be with you. That I can so clearly see you as a man who can love, who can live a full life, who can be steadfast in his purpose, who can choose to nurture the best parts of himself, who will have more than enough love and faith inside to heal not only himself… but all those who come after. I don’t have to bet on you, it is already written on you. I have scribed it on your soul… it has become your destiny.
Let me leave some inspiration…to remind you of all your wonderful talents. Do not be afraid of your own beauty and magnificence. Be tender and thoughtful when you trim the tree of your life… let all your endeavors fruit beautiful sweet things that one day plant seeds of their own.
Let me leave you my forgiveness. Know that I’ve already forgiven you, and I hope this can give you the permission you need to forgive yourself. You are only human, with a heart, with feelings. People whom should have loved you had hurt you and you were trying to understand how that could be. You always loved a good role play. Any questions I’ve asked of you after were so that I could come to my own understanding. So that I could prevent myself… from hurting others I love.
Let me leave you a touch of tenderness… to remind you how to handle those you care for. I hope it works you over to teach you the strength of gentleness. I hope the sensation imprints on your nervous system and brings you calm and peace so you can be in the world the kindness you were meant to be.
Let me leave you a some of my discipline and loyalty. I believe you need it to be true to yourself. There is no better gift you can give yourself than becoming someone who loves yourself with such consistency that you have no choice but to follow through with your dreams, practice your virtue, and trust in your own love.
Let me leave you hope. There is always hope. Let this hope float like soft lights to guide your way… and not like stones in your pocket. I know one day…not far from now. You will become all the things you hoped you would be. In that moment, recognize yourself. Then finally give yourself the permission to be happy and content.
Lastly, let me leave some things unsaid between us. After all, there are volumes of things left here unwritten… it is always the mark of the story unfinished.
With all the love of this heart once chosen,
She who shared the by-line of our life
A Soft Kind of Suicide
Why do we introduce ourselves as “Hello, my name is blank, I do this for a living, I am from this place, and I was raised this way” instead of “I am a soul who has lived and died a thousand times, a heart who loves richly, and am a mind a war.”
Saint Augustine wrote “Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”
I believe true love for anyone, family, friend, or lover, is a choice that changes you. It is scary because it is a soft kind of suicide. It is called falling in love, because you recognize you irrevocably forfeit a current you. A leap into a new future and self. Love is a precious thing, and that is the price. There is no true love that isn’t paid for in a kind of metaphorical death. In my loss and in my pain, finding that I held for him a love greater than pride or desire, bigger than hope or survival, this pain was and has been my greatest teacher. It taught me how to love and be gentle with myself. Even in learning to love myself, I mourn the she I was before. I find beauty in her giving too much of herself away for those she loved, for sacrificing her needs to make a safe home for others, for believing you could fix other people’s brokenness and lack of self-love by simply loving them more.
I am not so different now in my growing. I still love to give, but I also give to myself. I now know it is a gift, being needed. So, I do not make my needs so small, and try to ask for help and care and time. I know that love always needs to be the choice of the lover, even in self-love. That the best way to encourage people to know they deserve love is to model it for them, to sit with them in patience and grace, to respect them and only tolerate respect. So here I am, in adulthood not wishing anything was different. Learning how to give myself the things I needed from others. Learning how to take up space in my own life.
With Love Like Water
You look through me
as light that walks through water
You cannot perceive
a love like mine
a one like me
I did not fall in love with you
as full fruit falls
My love
was as purposeful
as rain
molecule by molecule
collected from my oceans
carried leagues
to water the Earth of you
Tending to It Until It Feels Seen
Why do we subscribe to such a narrow definition of sanity? Are our darkest darknessess and brightest colors truly outside of what it means to be and exist that are acceptable? Is life not full enough to include the feelings, meanderings, and behaviors of birth as well as destruction? To live and love deeply, to experience all we were built to experience, it is important to have compassion for these things. We are not simply our feelings, though they inhabit us. What is wrong in tending to a leg that is no longer there? If it hurts, what is wrong in having compassion for ourselves through the pain instead of saying it shouldn’t hurt anymore. How crazy is it to still feel the loss of the things we were never meant to lose?
My grandmother did not look crazy; her pain was genuine and real. My mother never told her that her leg was long gone, that it should not hurt anymore. In fact, she did the opposite. She would cover her legs with a blanket, and massage both her living leg and her prosthetic leg. This was the only thing that eased the pain. Acknowledging that it existed, giving it space and comfort, and tending to it until it felt seen. In this way, my mother taught me about love, loss, and grief. Only things we need and care for can hurt us. The things we love and lose, are never really gone from us. That is why it hurts. It is real for us. All the threads that tie us to another person and another time. You are not broken or less beautiful. You are love. You have loved. I see you.
Mental wellness spaces in literature and society has a long history, especially for women in grief and loss, of displacing, silencing, and invalidating the human story. It is such a privilege to feel safe enough to share and express my own pain here, among others who have painted their experiences of feeling unseen, unheard, and cloistered from love and acceptance. I believe compassion for each other and ourselves serves as not only the greatest healer, but also the truest measure of humanity. May we be gentle with ourselves.
This write was prompted after a decade of loss, punctuated by the end of my marriage, the death of a friend, the deterioration of my health, and the pain of surviving.
In my slow healing, I have been confronted by how to be kind and loving to myself after putting myself last. Working to answer the questions of: how to treat the banshees that wail in my mind, how to listen to the sirens that sing in the ocean of my heart without drowning, and how to tend to the fragile, warm light that still exists.
I hope something in the chronicle of my exploration of mind holds something for you. Even if it is only the idea that there is no one or right way to love, or be. There are no good or bad feelings. We and our stories belong here, in both page and breath.
Articulate Heart, or @articulateheart, is my pen-name. I am a first generation daughter of southeast Asian immigrants, where being complimented about how well spoken I was always carried equal parts pain and pride. A quiet comment about how parts of myself seemingly didn’t belong together. In my mid adulthood, I have embraced the part of myself that strives to find the most fitting words for even ineffable feelings or situations. I also believe we all are meant to be more than one thing.
I write poetry and short essays typically examining the intersection of nature and soul. With the exception of this write, in this space, it has been important to me to remain neutrally gendered in my prose. My writing has been an expression of my soul. My hope has been to encapsulate thoughts and feelings that are somewhat universal. A process I’ve always called “unaloning.”
I grew up in Southern California, crossing both cultural and socio-economic classes. Both an artist and a scientist, I have lived in a perpetual state of interweaving and in-between. Much of my experience is defined by the pain of struggling and finding beauty in that growth.
I am a strong advocate for support of those who experience physical and mental chronic illness, equity in society, and the preservation of nature. For reasons unknown, I feel a strong kinship with the bees.
From my heart, whomever you are, I wish you well.
Madwomen in the Attic 
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