The Broken Pieces

There was this book that a friend loaned me. I won't say the title. That would be telling. But it stuck because I heard that it was something a girl I liked a lot was a fan of, and I heard my friend liked it too, so I borrowed it, read it, and it struck me somewhat too.

It explained that when we love other people, it's like giving a piece of your heart to someone. Every new person in our lives comes in and takes a piece. We go from person to person, forming new relationships each, and they all get a piece. We break up, we break off another part of our hearts, then find someone one to give another part.

Then, at the end, we find someone we really want to give the whole heart. So we try and look at what of our heart is left to give. We find out we've given away our heart in bits to others, like little floating shards of glass. We give the one last person a heart missing parts. We cannot give our 'whole selves'.

And you know what was funny? I was a college student then, reading this, and seriously, seriously thinking it made a lot of sense. I felt, "Hey, I can't go committing to others so easily. I need to take every single girl I want to take in my life very seriously, and only one can get to keep me."

Hence, I became a Man who Can't be Kept. And I learned to be vindictive, jealous, and self-centered in some ways too.

This line of thinking poisoned me, and I think it poisons others too. We think we feel less of ourselves the more we open our lives to others. We add to our list of partners in bed, or the people we date, and when it doesn't work out we doubt if we can love as hard. Then we try again, and we add to our fears. "Can I still do that? Will they think me dirty, having had others in my life, having shared my love and my body? Should I have waited until I met the right one?"


It's a nice picture, seeing our hearts as breakable, and made of sharp pieces. But it's not accurate. Hearts are not glass, hard and fragile and dangerous to others and ourselves. Hearts are muscles. Hearts beat. They quake and shake and are surprisingly strong. They also heal, mend, and grow. Like every muscle it breaks in little parts, so it can be bigger than the last one, the muscle fibers wrapping around the tiny cracks it breaks off.

I learned that loving doesn't mean we break off parts of our heart. Real love doesn't use itself up. It doesn't drain us - it renews us, refreshes us so we can go and give more. Even when we think we can't, we find it. Even when we feel lost and alone, the heart is strong. And full of powerful stuff.

We can love more than we ever had, if we allow ourselves.

And I guess that's a lesson I'm learning and picking up for myself these days. Better late than never.