The crush that healed my broken heart.

I seriously felt it break apart in my chest — that thing I called a heart. Not because the love was ever really that deep(ly shared) but because it became so clear that it never had been at all. It was humbling and horrible to admit.

I sat in that void lacking a person who only ever felt platonic feelings, or probably/maybe more but never accessed or wanted them. Or fully claimed them.

And when I finally left it was a brick wall that pushed me out the front door.

The weeks and months left me hollow and fragile. Distracted minglings with friends and acquaintances ended too soon as they went about their lives and I returned “home” to unsteady living spaces for many months.

And in that tension, numbed and wandering, I existed. The grief for something and someone I never even ‘had’ eventually subsided to feelings of dread and fear.

Disappointment and discouragement and desolation made a hole. And then I became the hole. There was me and then a void and then other people.

I had never felt so alienated and alone in my whole life.

I thought I would never be able to feel anything for anyone. Ever. Again.

Admiring strangers came around with propositions, leaving me angry and annoyed. There was no refuge in those offers, nothing that felt strong and assured.

This was my adjustment to being seen again. This was my acclimation to living as a guy/transgender person; a new identity and life experience in my mid-30s. Living the daily death and rebirth of obsolete and integrated selves.

In this new place, there would be new rules. New games. New challenges and new experiences and they would all teach me how to be and how to love, newly.

And my heart stirred. Quietly. Feeling more apt.

And then it happened.

She appeared with that smile. It’s a good one. One of the best I’ve seen.

As we sat and talked and she flashed this dazzling grin that’s wide and open, something jumped into my throat. I realized it was my heart. I steadied myself on the couch and couldn’t stop the words from coming out, “your smile makes me feel so happy!”

And she paused, tilted her head a little, and said, “see, now, that’s really nice.”

The moment of closeness caught us both off-guard I think. As we nursed wounds from previous times that were hard to find and hold every day. Our guarded hearts not yet open and free.

But mine was beating again. And I wish I could say that it was easy and things came together like we all dream about.

But it doesn’t matter — if it ever does or doesn’t. Because her gift was that dazzling smile that healed my broken heart. That grin that crushed my skepticism as it conveyed her deep and delicate soul. A soul I suddenly yearned to see, hear and know.

And that evening was when love, for me and others, came back into my life. That feeling of connection and intimacy that glimmered brightly for just the right amount of time.

To remind me that it can happen, again, or maybe for the first time.