Fearless Heart

Sorry for not posting sooner. My grandma has been in the hospital and I've been having a lot of issues of my own health wise, but I promise I have a ton of things to blog about, and will soon hopefully get caught back up with life. In the meantime, I have a special treat for you.

Recently, Keltie Colleen held a Fearless Heart contest through Sugar and Bruno. You had to write about why you had a fearless heart, and what it meant to you. I entered, and not even an hour later, Keltie had put a quote from my entry on her Twitter, which you can view here. Since then, I've been wanting to post my entry, but couldn't until the winners were announced for the contest. Although I didn't win or place, I still am going to share what I wrote, because I'm very proud of it, and very honored that Keltie liked a line of it enough to share it with all of you. Thank you, Keltie :)! In case you all don't know, she's the original Fearless Heart girl.

The Girl

There’s a girl who always walks on the edge of life. Like walking against the water in the chill of the winter, only it’s not winter. It’s summer, the middle of, and everything is blooming, spanning miles across the land and seeping into the air and sky like a drug. It’s addictive and insane. It changes hearts, minds, and burns dark inside those of us who choose to listen to it closely. But it’s far away, too far to touch or grasp, and that’s why she walks on the edge. The highest, the deepest, the coldest and most daring. You’ll find her there.

The sand feels neat against her skin, but it gets in the crevices and it causes her to cringe a little against it. Her left foot rises up, her right toes extended as the others dip into the water. It’s so cold that it knocks her back for a second, and she’s forced to respire. To catch her breath and capture a new life, if you will.

There’s an intricate way that the water comes in when the sun starts to fall out of the sky, but the sun isn’t falling yet. No. It’s dancing signified pirouettes all over the Russian Cathedrals. When she tries to imitate it, she falls, splashing against the icy water. Reveries run through her head like old friends and nightmare driven enemies, but she pushes them out. They welcome themselves back and she loses it all for one brief second.

Before she knows it, she fails to get up and wipe herself off again. That thing they say about sticks and stones, it’s not true. Words can hurt, but images can burn into you with the intensity of a million bonfires, the ones she spent with you.

She’s swept under, but she doesn’t fight. She’s so frozen in space and time that it doesn’t matter, because your face is the only thing she keeps regurgitating every time her eyes blink, or she tries to sleep. It’s not worth the fight any longer, because all she sees is you, only not really. You’re never there.

You’re like the finite ghost, carved of stone but made of gravel. It’s a schizophrenic mix, one that can only explain the things you do, or how you act. Something pulls her in anyway, and if this is how her life will always be, the way she figures it, she’s better just to let the water take her in. She’s never given up before, and she’s not now. She’s simply too weak to fight.

Photographic pictures plague her brain and make a mural across the back of her eyelids. Black and white most photos come, but then there’s the ones with color. The way you dress, the things you wear that never match. And that’s you. She sees herself much differently, and she tries to look pretty for you even when you turn the other cheek. She then tells herself she dressed up just to feel good that day, but she lies. She always lies.

She was trapped inside herself. She didn’t doubt it for a minute and she still gave up her right to fight. But this time, pictures flash through her head like film frames, some broken, some just trying to force start themselves until they recharge her heart, sending a bolt through it that is sure to shoot her right out of the water and back into humanity.

But humanity is not humane, and she can feel that with each picture that pops up in her mind before being erased like a digital epitome. She remembers the good times along with the bad, and for every bad memory, there’s two or three good ones to counter back with. They’re the ones her full out heart wants her to dance upon, toes in the air, drifting gracefully across them until she’s drown the bad ones beneath with their own guilt.

She remembers the time that her friend of three years, the only guy she ever learned to trust, used her and then walked away because he had gotten what he needed out of her. What he took wasn’t physical, but it was emotionally a piece of her heart, a part of her brain she couldn’t replace with a different cell just to make everything all right.

Then she remembers how, when she saw him again two months later and he decided he needed her again, she was able to hold her head up high and tell him “no, thank you.” She was angry with him for being so careless with her, but she didn’t have to yell at him to feel satisfied, because she simply had nothing more to say to him than that, and it made her whole again.

She then remembers how every boy she’s come to know has lied to her, cheated, or broken her heart, and she wonders how she ever got the strength she did. Them hurting her like a rag doll with a fabric heart, they helped her strength grow and nurtured it. And in a way, she should thank them for being deprecating, because she will be better off than they ever will be. They taught her how not to act. She’s grateful, so she learns what tools that it takes to move on.

She trusted in herself, believed every part of her, and learned that each piece a person takes from you, you get back with time. Only now that piece is different. It’s been altered and redesigned to be something new and fresh. It’s like how the leaves turn colors and escape to the ground in the fall, only to renew themselves each spring. It’s a re-growth, like being reborn, and with each time this happens, a stronger person emerges.

Then she’s pulled back again violently, to the days when her father was still around. She remembers him after the divorce, when she had to retreat to his house every weekend. She can picture everything he threw at his girlfriends, the way it broke against their skin, and the time he threw her into a coffee table and then locked she and his new wife in a room all night. She then remembers how the day he left for good ten years ago was the best day of her life. And she knows why she can’t trust men.

All she has to trust in is herself and that’s enough for her, because she knows herself. She works on herself and tries each day to become a better person, to bloom fancy colors that only she will appreciate in all possible lights. She deals with her feelings on paper. She sings them, writes them and does what it takes to understand why she is the way she is. But even still, understanding doesn’t mean instant healing.

It means one day the scars will heal. One day she’ll trust again. And one day she’ll be an amazing woman who isn’t made of what someone did to her all those years back. She’s only supported by it. And that one day may as well be today as far as she’s concerned, because she adores the woman she’s brought herself up to be, but only because she’s so unrefined that each imperfection sparkles like a diamond under her own microscope of satire dreams.

Subconsciously the bad will all be erased, and all that counts now is that she tries. But every so often, even when she’s feeling okay, it comes back and fights her with a crushing blow, and she struggles to get back on her feet again. Even still, she knows that she should really thank him for helping her to grow, while he’ll stay behind in a sick little chain of events that will one day be his demise, while she’ll be living strong. A better person for what he’s missing out on, because she’s special. It’s his loss.

This memory dissipates as a new one enters. It’s the time she took a stand and she wrote a letter to her dad. She locked it away in a safe place instead of sending it. Because after it was written, she realized he didn’t deserve the letter, and the only power it held were the words that were spilled inside of it. Each time she feels like she can’t go on, she pulls out the letter and remembers every reason why she can step forward into flaming lava in her bare feet and not feel a thing. But she feels free anyway, despite the numbness that’s locked inside her veins.

Then it hits her, the only thing with a true power over her, for if this didn’t exist, she’d be mentally stronger and physically able to be superwoman in all things, not just sometimes. The illness she’s been struggling with for ten years, the way her heart doesn’t beat correctly, and how she’s sick more than she’s not. The doctor’s office visits, the time in the hospital and her never ending will. The way it’s taken her life, one that she will and is doing anything to get back, because she knows someday she will. And that day will be soon. But if she gives up, all she’s going to lose is herself.

She stops there, knowing that she should thank her body somehow. Throw it a party and make it a parade, because it has a lesson to teach her. She is this way for a reason, and with all that she’s learned to observe, she’s going to come out of this kicking and screaming to make a difference in someone else’s life the way that some people have in hers. She’s going to want to do good and be more than just alive. She’s going to want to live, too, and for herself. Because if you live for someone else, anything that was once special about you disappears slowly until it’s like a rainbow. There for awhile, beautiful and impossible to find the ends of, but then they unravel and it disappears, not knowing how long it will be until it’s seen again.

She likes herself. She ultimately likes who she is, and in this moment she decides this. She decides that no matter what anyone else says or does, or what her body tells her, her heart is fearless. It’s this way because she’s afraid, and she’s not perfect. She sometimes says the wrong things, does the wrong things, but she’s okay with that because she is human. She is herself and one else but her, and that’s exactly who she wants to be.

Then, there’s a breakthrough as she starts spiraling up towards the surface. It’s as if almost by the angels, someone has gotten beneath her, pushing her to the top. With her eyes still closed, all she can see now are more film clips, but all good this time.
The bad has been pushed out by her never ending will to survive, the one that still sees you but knows that, even though you’re the only one with the power to split her in two, you’ve kept her going all this time at just the thought of the way you could taste. And that’s not even the best she has to offer her vividly colorful mind.

She remembers warm nights and music, texting about aliens and boys who quit their job because someone called them a name. She remembers saran wrapping someone’s car, and him loving it so much that he drove off without breaking the wrap. She remembers decorating people’s cars for their birthday. Happiness. She remembers how, for each boy that caused an earthquake, there’s another who caused her a therapeutic turn of events, but not as many as she’s caused herself.

Then she remembers her dog, the one who is her best friend, and the people and pets that came before her to brighten her life. She remembers that she is silly, goofy, nerdy, moody, messy, doesn’t always know the right things to say, and sometimes falls on her ass when everyone is looking because she wasn’t, but those are all the things she loves about herself. The imperfections are what she lives for, as the perfections are only a mirage.

She remembers that in taking in the good, you’re taking in the bad, and visa versa. But as she breaks through the peak of the water and floats delicately onto the beach, she remembers the most important thing.

Everyone has fears, bad days, sadness, heartache, and no one is truly fearless, but that’s why they are. The only thing in life that is worth living for is yourself, and the way those nights when it’s just her and a lullaby make her feel. That’s when she knows that, no matter where she goes or where life takes her, she’ll always be home.

Each time someone hurts her, each time she lets herself get hurt, it’s a chance to hold her head above water and grow from it. To learn something new and to be a better person. It allows her to weed out what she wants in her life and what she does not deserve. Who she needs, and who is using her. It teachers her lessons in love, life and the internal happiness of the sun shining above and what makes it tick. It’s what gives her a fearless heart.

To her, having a fearless heart means believing in fairy tales and miracles, and she knows someday both will come into her life and sweep her off her feet in a way that she never imagined possible. But she also knows that it means taking time for herself even when everyone is clawing at her for attention. It means eating a whole pint of ice cream in sweats, while laughing at bad television shows with messy hair and still finding herself sexy. If she can’t do that, no one else will ever see the light that shines for miles inside of her as her feisty being burst and communes into an unconventional retribution of chances.

She knows there’s mystery behind all the eyes you connect with, but the only mystery in life is figuring out yourself, and who you truly are. So she allows her heart to unbind the ties she’s let someone else carve out for her, as she remembers one last thing.

That the girl she’s been trapped inside of all along, the fearless heart with a hard iron will and a vulnerability that she finds complimenting to the both the best and worst of features...is me.