Serve and Protect

I walked home in the rain today. Even though the weather forecast had predicted rain, it’s quite rare that I would have ever factored the prospect of it actually happening into my day. As a rule, I generally prepare for all weather or no weather. It strikes me as more than a little arrogant to think that Mother Nature can be crammed neatly into a 7-day forecast, right between a gang shooting and a playoff game highlight. The weather will do whatever it wants to do, and its’ fickle tendencies will play upon the Earth regardless of whether or not I remembered to bring an umbrella or not, which, by the way, I didn’t.

Umbrellas serve as protection. They protect us from the wet, the cold, the potential discomfort of our situation. Once I was without one however, I was struck by how little I actually missed it, and admitted that I didn’t really need to be protected at the moment. I was okay, getting wet and sidestepping puddles. It was nice to feel the breeze around me, chilling the raindrops that had blazed trail ways across my face and toes. I, of course, was wearing sandals.  

But I never would have realized this, had I had an umbrella handy before I stepped outside. How often do we do this? Protect ourselves as a precaution? Because something could happen, something might happen, because we have been conditioned and trained to take the least painful route possible. Honestly, it doesn’t make much sense. How do you even know that an umbrella is what you need in the first place if you’ve never felt the rain? Once you’ve felt that drenching, soaking sort of rain that chills you to your bones, only then can you appreciate the value of an umbrella.

And as immense a business of avoiding a broken heart has become, it is through the sole experience of having your heart broken that you appreciate why it might need protecting. The heart is a tricky place. I’m pretty sure mine is surrounded by barbed wire and snipers, with only a select few outsiders in possession of the access code. And even they have to pass a retinal scan. It is what it is, but I think I’m starting to figure out why.

When your heart breaks, it is painful simply because there is so much of it that breaks simultaneously. The scent of dryer sheets, an off-key song, a loose strand of hair curled around an ear; these are the things that break. A fissure exists in between the left side of the bed and a post-it note on the mirror. Hairline fractures freckle the landscape of my memories, because we used to slow dance in the living room to movie credit soundtracks, even though you rolled your eyes as you spun me around.

Breaking a heart is always an inside job; a regular, who knows their way around. Someone who helped construct the towers within, adding layer after layer of petal soft words, building entire cities from musical notes and apples in tuna fish. A person, who you waved through all of the checkpoints, and supplied with domestic weaponry never suspecting that it would be turned against you. Heart breaking is exactly that. Running through alleyways, pushing over skyscrapers, not slowing to watch them fall. A massive internal earthquake that leaves devastation in its’ wake.

As painful as it is though, once you have stood in those bullet ridden remains of your life, and felt the rain pour down your face, you now understand the importance of an umbrella.

I have rebuilt my heart from the ground up. I have gutted the cities and drained the sewers, and stitched the sky back together with strong, ragged strokes. And I’m okay. I survived the hidden fault lines of a naïve love, and gritted my teeth in the aftershocks that followed. My borders are guarded, heavily armed, and full of good intentions. My umbrella, stretching across the dust ridden terrain that I must protect.

Sometimes though, you leave your umbrella at home. And even though your instinct is that of panic, of distress, you take a step outside. And you’re okay. Your eyelashes are sticking together, and your toes strain to find purchase in the wood grain of Steve Madden, but you’re okay. It actually feels kind of, nice. To stop fighting back. Letting nature soften your edges, and erode your defenses. It’s messy. When you get home, you’ll have to change out of your sopping wet clothes, untangle your hair, and wipe off your face. But it is what it is, and if I find it arrogant to claim mastery over a weather forecast, how much more arrogant am I to declare jurisdiction over my heart?

 Life is messy, and love is the chaotic, rumpled web that holds all of it together. So while I hold fast to my feeble attempt at border patrol now, I know that I will not always do so. Not on the basis of what could happen, of what might happen. Because it’s obvious to see that we survive equally fine, if not unquestionably better, with the rain cascading down our faces, and that is, in the end, what should happen.