My Heart Will Go On

I’m kind of an expert on being dumped.

I’ve opened up my chest, handed over my beating and throbbing heart to eight men (boys) in my lifetime. Four of them, I asked for my heart back, and they did so in a gentle manner. But four of them – yeah, not so much. They threw it in the dumpster for me to search for weeks, months, and in one case, years after – just to get it back.

I have some good dumping stories.

One resulted in my move to LA, so my trashed heart did go on, Celine Dion. That dumping was worth it in the end.

The next dumping was because he was cheating and liked her better. That one not only made me feel at my most disposable, I was also worried that I may have contracted an STD (I didn’t, for the RECord). He took my heart, carried it with him, held it while he was humping his law firm associate, then casually tossed it into the graffiti stained dumpster on the way out. After I dug around the putrid refuse, I found my heart, and over a long, arduous process, cleaned it up, returned it to the cavernous hole in my chest, and built a fortress around it. I vowed to never give my heart away again.

Psych!

I totally gave my heart away again. You see, trash does live. It beats, it believes, it moves forward. It does not disappear or get incinerated. It has selective amnesia and wants to dream that at some point it will not be trash.

My next go round, I gingerly gave my heart away, and this one blew it up on the Fourth of July. Tossed half of it into the beer can recycling bin about two hours before the festivities, and blew the rest up. There was no fight, no arguing; he simply said, “I don’t think I want to be with you anymore.” TWO HOURS BEFORE FIREWORKS. Who does that?!

I grabbed all the pieces of my heart- in the bin, all over the ground strewn with wrappers and empty solo cups and brought them home where – again- I started to reassemble this delicate organ that refused to give up.

Other people may have handled my heart like trash, but it keeps living, beating and going on, looking for that day that someone will take it, caress it, and make it stronger. In the meantime, all I can do is nurture her myself. She still beats, she still loves, and she likes it when I dance. 🙂