I caught myself smiling today.
It was coming right from the bottom of my heart, and this radiant glow was surging through my body while a fervent tingling feeling left goosebumps on my skin.
It was overwhelming, and I had to take a minute to catch my breath and soak up the moment.
Sure. On paper, a smile doesn’t seem like an especially extraordinary thing.
But when you haven’t felt the need to truly smile in a while…
It’s a big deal.
Here’s the thing:
I think my heart is broken.
Yes, someone pretty much sucker punched it without good cause (for the umpteenth time), but I think it might be broken because it only knows how to love at the highest level.
It’s either no love, or all the love. 0 to 100, but no in between.
When it comes to love, I fall hard and I fall fast – which might be good news for whoever’s lucky enough to be on the receiving end of it, but this scenario usually tends to cause me a lot of grief when things don’t go my way.
For example:
Just recently, I reconnected with someone from a past life. In a new city where I really had nothing to hold onto, I found familiarity and comfort in someone I used to know. In no time, he became someone who I fell in love with, but who ended up breaking my heart and leaving me feeling unstable in unfamiliar surroundings.
I was completely blind-sided by the whole thing.
And then, I lost myself.
When your heart only knows love at max volume and someone turns the love off, the silence is deafening. I was left stuck in this abyss of confusion, unsure of what to do with myself.
I questioned everything.
“If I have all this love to give and the person I want to give it to doesn’t want it – what’s the point? And if the one person who made me feel at home in a place where I have no roots planted isn’t there anymore, why live here at all?”
I felt empty in a city that made me feel like I was all alone. Without my best friends, my family or anything nearby that I felt truly inspired me, I felt lifeless.
I didn’t feel like I had any reason to smile.
Admittedly, I took a few days off work to mope in my apartment and be miserable. I took a week long escape to partially disconnect from my depressing reality. When I finally decided to face the harsh truth, my courage was quickly replaced with anxiety and I panicked hard.
It caused me to instantly feel like my life was about to quickly spiral out of control. I was scared, stressed and fragile. It was hard enough to find the energy to shower and dress like a decent human being, let alone smile about anything.
I fell apart from the inside.
Right now, some of my heart and soul still lie in pieces – but I’ve come to the realization that sometimes when life throws us unexpected and frustrating curve balls, falling apart is the best thing we can do for ourselves.
When we vent, get angry, cry until our tear ducts are empty and sink into our sadness – we allow our souls to breathe and release tension.
In the process of unraveling, we grow.
As we talk to people and spill our emotions, we’re reminding ourselves of who we are, what we want, and why we do and say and think the way we do.
As we dissolve into our hardships, old friends and new friends and people who are good for our spirit reveal themselves. They reawaken our passions, desires, and our purpose.
Allowing ourselves to fall apart and feel everything is completely okay – as long as we make sure to get back up and find ourselves again.
It doesn’t happen right away and there might be a million little bits we have to collect and put back together, but we can’t stay broken. We’ve got to pick ourselves up and reconnect the pieces of ourselves, even if it’s just one small piece at a time.
And when our shattered pieces start to come back together and we start to feel a little bit more like ourselves again…
We can smile about it, right from the depths of our heart.