The heart is an amazing organ. It does have physical pain. When my husband died, my heart hurt. It felt like it was bleeding– physically painful. I would hold my hands over my heart and tell it, “It’s okay. Please hang in there!” Oh, it hurt so bad. I had heard that someone’s heart can hurt, but I thought it was a metaphor. I learned it can seriously hurt. I had never felt the physical pain of heartache like this. I have heard that Tylenol helps a hurting heart which makes sense because it is an organ and it proves that your heart truly feels emotions and pain.
My heart has gone through a healing process…
I think when I found out my husband was missing it started to bleed, then when I found out he had passed away it was put through the meat grinder. Maybe a slicer as well. It was so disproportionate, it didn’t resemble anything like how it looked or worked before. I tried to put a bandaid on it for the first few weeks. Picture one bandaid on a huge gaping wound. There’s no way that would hold the pieces in place. After a month or so when I realized who and where I was, I found out I had to use gauze to wrap my heart up and daily change the gauze, soothing it with ointment and care. Some days I would pull off the gauze too fast and it would start bleeding again and set my healing back. One step forward and three steps back. After a few weeks of daily care, I found it wasn’t bleeding as much and I could skip a day of taking off the heart bandage. Then I could go a week or a month before replacing the gauze. Oops, I pulled that gauze off way too fast, it’s back to bleeding again. And on and on it went until later it didn’t need gauze to hold it’s shaped. It took months, then years to slowly heal. It started to take the shape of a heart again.
Years later I could use bandages to cover the small wounds that still needed some care. Once in a while, it had a bleeding fit where I had to spend some time taking care of my broken heart. Just like a wound on your skin, time did heal my heart.
Now some of my heart is covered in scars. Tougher than it once was. It looks and feels different. Better and stronger than it has ever been. I love my scars now. They are reminders of what I have been through and what I have become.
