Here and Now:
Thursday, January 03, 2007
Saint Louis Park, MN

My heart is not broken. I am not even at an age where I can say that with feeling and not feel a blush of mortification color my neck. I have outpaced that state of perepetual emotional peaks and troughs - thank the stars! If I languish a little at the very end of my prayers and a few unbidden what-ifs run through my head - I write it down to the inability of the female mind to ever give up on its favorite fantasy. I don't know if I beleive in 'true love' anymore - I hate to sound cynical and embittered - but thats not why I dont beleive in that myth anymore. Its a bit like beleiving in Santa isnt it? - we all have to outgrow it at some time. Someone once told me a theory of chemistry, commitment and logic constituting what everyone wants to romanticize into love and I remember dismissing it as frigid and bloodless. But I begin to see the wisdom of detatchment - proof is in how we all love, lose, move on, 'love' again, marry, make babies and dismiss some of our strongest emotions as childish and fleeting. Its only my need to elevate human emotion above well thought out impulses and hormonal rushes that makes me balk at this definition of love. My own heart has managed to do this with consummate ease and as long as I dont dwell with the clarity of hindsight on what made me love the man I loved and why I took longer to get over him than him over me and why I have now managed to move on and want a new beginning, I can pretend that I loved, lost and my poor broken heart was healed in time and learned to want love again.