I Will Not Burn My Heart, My Soul Ever Again
My stomach is writhing… my heart pounding, echoing further and further away. I watch myself from afar, feeling so much, saying so little, silently wailing ‘NO’.
But I don’t. I don’t say no. I don’t say anything. Instead, I brace myself to shut down the anguish, the hurt, the knowing…
I’m standing at the wood stove in the basement of my childhood home, watching him open the door. In his hands, an old shoebox filled with my writing, my words of truth, worry, pain and love. His unhappiness, his disappointment surprises me. His demand to “throw them away” astonishes me.
“If they don’t matter to you anymore, why can’t you just get rid of them?” I don’t remember his exact words, but his expectation was clear. Turn part of my heart, my soul to ashes… burn the poems I had written to deal with pain, heartbreak, emotions, confusion of a teenage soul.
What is this memory? Why has it chosen now to appear? I suppose it’s proof, some small part of me still needs proof of how far I have come, how much I have grown. The memory gives me that. I know this because I no longer feel anger. I no longer feel shame. I no longer feel blame.One of the HARD things about turning yourself inside out, to finding your truth, your joy is you rediscover these moments in time. The moments where now you SEE. You see a different choice, you see where fear outweighed the courage you now possess. You see how you started to move away from who you were toward who they wanted you to be.It was an ask I knew I didn’t want to succumb to. I said I would, I think I even intended to follow through, and yet as I stood at the stove with pages of my words, holding my deepest truth, hurts, loves, wants, and dreams... I held them to my heart and tucked them away... not far enough as it turns out.I was sixteen and “in love”. My heart had already been broken - in the way only a teenage girl’s heart can be. Such heartbreaks and experiences were the catalysts for my poetry, for expressing the swirling chaos of emotions (and hormones). Poetry was my vessel to express, to be vulnerable… to feel safe with what lay inside.They were in a shoebox... my collection, my memoirs, words I had found to console, to inspire, to heal, to ponder my dreams. The memory is vague on how he came to know of the poems - perhaps I showed him, wanting to share part of me in a way I wasn’t able to express openly.
Is this what led to me holding my heart so close for the next 20 some years?
Was this the beginning of my walking away from my truth?
It’s only part of my story and in remembering, I find more courage. In sharing, I find more truth. I had a choice when this memory unfolded. I could be angry, bitter, resentful.... or, I could be thankful, forgiving, knowing it’s simply part of my path to finding my way back to love, to self.What happened to the poems? They were turned to ashes, my words up in flames, gone for eternity. I didn’t understand at the time what he was asking me (telling me). In my mind, I believed he wouldn’t ask such a thing and so I hung on and when he found them… he burned them. When I couldn’t throw them into the fire, he stood in front of me and burned them instead.3 years later at barely 19, I married this man. Most of our marriage was a happy one… Little did I know the journey of betrayal had begun at that moment by the woodstove… but ignorance is truly bliss and it would take the next 16 years to start understanding what actually began that day.This is one of many memories that have been slowly resurfacing, things I haven’t thought about in years, nearly forgotten. What’s bringing them forward now? It’s hard to say but in each, I find a lesson, in sharing I fulfill a deep calling to help others to feel heard, understood, and cherished.I’d love to hear your story or the part you're ready to share... Maybe it’s just simply a feeling or sensation you had in reading mine. Tell me more when you’re ready...