An Inconvenient Heart

“She had a very inconvenient heart. It always insisted on feeling things ever so deeply.”

John Mark Green

If you don’t know me well, then I guess you really don’t know this truth about me. I feel things deeply; my heart is most inconvenient at times. Okay, a lot of the time. All the time maybe. Quite possibly.

I can get emotional over fictional characters or a song on the radio. Certain news stories can bring tears to my eyes. Good grief…I can watch The Walking Dead and shed tears!

On a more serious note though, my heart is big and tender and broken all too often. There are times when I can keep the brokenness hidden from public view, because it embarrasses me or I am afraid/reluctant/unprepared to be exposed. Given a choice, I am choosy about how, when and with whom I share my deepest emotions, my heart. As an introvert, having a public display of overwhelming emotion is high on the list of things that must be avoided at all costs. Such displays, however, cannot always be avoided or even predicted.

I don’t have the time or energy to go into all the experiences and events that have touched my heart over the past six months, but trust me when I say that there have been many and their impact has left numerous craters that I fall into from time to time. When I do stumble into one of those holes, it never fails to catch me off-guard. I have this expectation that I should have moved on from ______(fill in the blank). Even when I believe that I have indeed moved on and gotten over it, emotions can still sneak up on and slap me upside the head, or heart. Sometimes I share those feelings in my blog. Sometimes I share them with my closest friends. Sometimes I pour them out in my paper journal or talk them out as I’m driving or walking. And still, there are times when I say nothing to anyone. Instead I feel the pain and hold it close to my body, afraid that its’ ugliness will be too much for anyone else to see. Truth be told, there are even times when what the heart feels isn’t pain but joy, and the tendency is still to keep the emotion under control, tightly wrapped and locked away.

I think I’m getting better at being more transparent, at least when appropriate and safe to do so; however, I know that I will always gravitate towards self-censorship over self-exposure. Perhaps that is just the nature of the introvert.