When it Hurts, Slow Down
A gentle reminder to take care of your heart
This past month had been monumental, not in the way I expected though. Three things came together: a rejection, a loss, and a delay.
So here is what I decided to call May — the month of regret. I am quite inexperienced when it comes to rejections, but it doesn’t matter, does it?
No matter how many times you’ve been rejected, being on the receiving end of a rejection is cathartic. It takes a lot of arrogance to not expect such an outcome in any circumstance, don’t we all fear rejection?
The fear of our cards not swiping through at the cashier, the fear of a stranger closing the elevator in our faces, the fear of finding out that a loyal colleague has been talking behind our back, the fear of being excluded at the family dinner.
Our first response is to flinch at the unpleasant trial we are placed against but slowly we are able to look past it.
One morning you wake up and you are no longer thinking about the snarky comment your aunt made at the dinner table. The skies are clear, and you are late for work, who cares about what that fifty year old thinks.
We do not have the luxury to afford such trivial grievances, we’ve got bills to pay and dishes to do.
Such things, we let them slide, they don’t bother us — they are part of the unpredictable cosmos. How could you appreciate certainty if not for the occasional chaos?
So when bigger chaos unfolds, we expect our hearts to bounce back as though they never went through a heartbreak. Would it not be foolish to expect a body to bounce back after a car crash they narrowly survived?
Why then do we tend to place such unrealistic expectations on this lump of flesh that beats a hundred, thousand times a day to help us survive?
Ask someone who has had a heart transplant about a broken heart, I daresay they would advise you to neglect it, let the pain subside, and don’t acknowledge it.
When I first heard the news that brought chaos to my calm being, I prayed that this calamity be replaced with something better but I kept trying to understand how and why this event preceded. Perhaps, it was my lack of perseverance? Maybe I should’ve tried harder? When will it stop hurting?
A month into the heartbreak, my month-old wiser self has one thing to tell me on the day I first felt hurt.
‘You do not have to recognize the wisdom behind every single loss to overcome it.’
Sit down, if you are sitting, lie down. Tell yourself that this too shall pass but you don’t have to be a bull and rush headfirst into normalcy. Let that sore muscle rest like any other. Take the time to acknowledge that you suffered. Suffering is what makes us human, anyway.
This rejection, this loss, or this delay will be compensated with something better. You should have high hopes for yourself and if you are clutching onto the why then this tidbit written by A. Helwa that I came across might help.
Sometimes you have to lose what you have and find it again for you to know the value of the blessing that you have always owned.
The next time you feel that dull ache of broken hopes and promises, of loss and rejection — slow down.
