Hope

The heart, or rather my heart, seems to have a ridiculous capacity to have the apparent life kicked out of it and yet continue beating, waiting for someone to be nice to it again. I’m a little concerned lately that I might be willing to one day consider the possibility of maybe finding a man that I might think about trusting with my heart again. Maybe. If he was really kind. And really patient. And really gentle. And really… what? What?

I don’t understand what it is within me that still hopes that committed, life long love is possible. All my proof is to the contrary, yet I can’t seem to kill it, try as I might.

I’m pretty sure I’m realistic about love. I don’t expect it to complete me. I don’t expect it to fulfill me. I don’t expect it to define me. I do expect it to talk with me, to pat me on the ass every now and then and squeeze me around the waist when I need to cry. That’s about it.
But maybe that is it.
The essence of all our complexities refined to simplicities that touch our truest longings?
A little communication? A little compassion? A little passion?

A friend of mine is in a very difficult marriage right now. I see her thrashing around, trying to clear her way through to a little bit of any of those things with her husband and it’s so damn hard that it might be impossible. Her heart keeps on taking these brutal beatings that leave her panting and I have simply no more words to lead her to solutions that don’t work. But we’re both still hoping. We’re hoping for something to give. For the good guys to win this once. For lightness to set the darkness running. For David to kill the damn giant.

I look at our hopeful hearts and I wonder if it is eternity within us that draws us to these truths, that although not always, or even often, realized on earth pull us forward to a striving for them? Is the merit maybe in the striving and not the succeeding? Is it all in the becoming?
I don’t know.
I do know the becoming is painful. Horribly painful. I also know that I’ve found in myself more communication, more compassion and more passion because of the pain. I do not say that lightly or with any sense of a fair pay off but only as a question, wondering if maybe the hope that I can’t seem to kill is perhaps not mine after all, but an echo within me of truth not yet realized.