Last night as i was sleeping
i dreamt--marvelous error!--
that i had a beehive
here, inside my heart.
and the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from all my old failures.
-- Antonio Machado
I was sad for a lot of years. The kind of sad where misery stares at you from your cereal bowl even though you’re eating lucky charms. The marshmallows have melted and turned the milk a murky-sickly sort of pink and you can’t even make out the shapes and why won’t they just let the damn leprechaun have his lucky charms so he can woo and maybe marry the Trix rabbit and have equal rights. But Trix are for kids and people are always after my lucky charms and I think Count Chocula looks a little like your grandpa.
You know how they say alcoholics recover for life? I think this is true also for the exceedingly sad. Just because you don’t cry everyday day or hide in the bathroom at your job doesn’t mean that you are no longer capable of attaining the earth shatteringly shattered soul you once had. My name is Chelsea and I’m a recovering broken heart. My sponsor came in the form of a dashingly handsome six foot four diabetic (a recovering sad sack himself) named Matt. He walked into my life a year ago under a black umbrella (literally, he was carrying an umbrella) and never walked out. We’ve been married for about two months. He changed everything for me and I haven’t had time to think about the life I had before him until now. I have been far too busy being unabashedly in love with him and trying to do it in heels. Falling in love, making love, a big move in together, making more love, planning and executing a wedding and being too tired to make love, it has really put a kink in my sadness. The truth is that he repaired and healed my heart in a way so incomprehensible that we should have our own 20/20 special. He brought me back to life ladies and gentlemen. And know for his next trick, this new love brought me to forgive my past. (Matt is going into a diabetic coma right now after reading that sweet declaration.) In fact not only do I forgive my past, I am embarrassed by how small and insignificant it looks from my new found place of being loved. It is like returning to a park you used to frequent as a child only to see that the playground is sorely lacking in safety and that bums have taken to sleeping in the only good shade.
You may be saying to yourself, maybe she wasn’t as sad as she thinks she was. So I would like to say here that I was really sad. Italics sad. I was the kind of sad you get from having all of your hopes and dreams thrown to the ground and smashed and walked on by an elephant with a kitten on his back; only to also find out that my hopes were rotting from the inside to begin with, so they were really easy to squash. Everyday things stung at my heart, making my little soul swollen and sore. I spent years in this distended sadness and woke up in the middle of it to find that somewhere along the way I had lost my religion (that’s me in the corner) and had been abandoned by a boy in zealot’s clothing who I had mistaken for the love of my life (that’s me in the spotlight looking like an asshole). Yes folks I am a recovering broken heart and also a convalescing Mormon. But I’d like to say here that had I not left the church I would have never met and married my cute little nonbeliever husband thus having attained this happiness. So stick that in your back pocket, I am happier than I have ever been being an apostate.
I would like to tell you that I had patched myself up before I met and seduced my husband, that I had been enough, that I had female-woman-power, that I had Rosie-the-riveted all over this town -- but that isn’t true. Not even sort of, and I am okay with that.
I tell Matt that I am happy he has diabetes, not because I am a terrible person, but because it has made him who he is, more responsible and cautious than most young men his age. Likewise I find myself here: making sweet honey from all my failures and putting it on toast and giving it to my diabetic husband when his blood sugar is low.
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4 comments:
Like I always say now, 'to heal, is to reveal'. And what better way then making sweet honey out of it for your cutie husband Ü
Well done, honey bee. I love you.
I can't tell you how much I can relate to this in multiple ways. I feel that Jimmy has helped me to become a more well-rounded, hopeful, and loving person. I also have had deep sadness in my life that feels like it is intermixed with the muscle of the heart. Some happy coincidences (and not-so-coincidences) finally helped me to make some peace this last year. We always have had a connection Rels, let's do lunch and talk about it.
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