Yes, yes, I am a Broken Hearted Young Lady but don’t come near me with a hammer & nails.
I am legitimately the easiest girl in the world to date. No, but seriously. Any guy would be lucky to date me.
Before I start sounding like the prototype of some half-dressed tween on the cover of Bop! Magazine let me explain.
A guy could sleep soundly at night knowing that he can never and will never break my heart, that my heart was been broken so many times before. By a Slew of Sad Commercials and Painful Truths Littered on the Fronts of Newspapers. Black & White & Tragedy all over them.
If I want anyone to know anything about me, it is this: My heart is broken. Very Broken. Quite Shattered.
And before I write further with this blog I think it is important to put this out in the open. I bathe my words in tones of optimism and joy, and I believe fully in all that I write. But at the core of it all, I am broken hearted and that is the sole reason for my writing to you all.
Yes, yes, I am a Broken Hearted Young Lady but don’t come near me with a hammer & nails. I could not stand it any other way.
It sounds strange but I have always had other people’s heartbreak pinned to my own heart. As far back as I can remember I have been writing the tales of other people’s tattered souls.
My family members would sit perplexed by stories that I wrote as a nine-year-old about tragedy and death, poverty of the spirit, cancer and separation from loved ones. Here I was, 4’6 and probably 60 pounds or so, click clicking away on my typewriter, pouring my heart, the same heart that beat for Aaron Carter and the Backstreet Boys, into the tragedies of the victims of suicide and Holocaust survivors.
I am surprised I was not in therapy for writing with a constant tone of morbidity at such a young age. I cannot explain it. I don’t think I ever will be able to. I just have found better ways of coping with it.
I take stock in the truth that just because a heart is broken does not mean that it is incomplete.
bro·ken (brkn) v.Past participle of break. adj.
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Forcibly separated into two or more pieces; fractured; cracked: a broken arm; broken glass.
I have written about broken hearts before, about how I think that people spend too much deeming what should and should not be broken. At what time. For how long. By who.
We spend too much time thinking that heartbreak does not have a place in this lifetime. That heartbreak should not fit into the equation. That, if one is heartbroken, they surely need to be fixed. Call the love doctor and stitch this baby back together.
To imagine a world that lacks any fractured hearts is unrealistic. I could spin this sentence into so many eloquent sentiments but I think it is better in its simplest form. It is unrealistic to think that when our own hearts our fixed, the hearts of neighbors won’t be broken next.
I feel bad for God in that sense. I imagine that up in his Big Armchair there is a soundtrack playing of the ripping and tearing all over the world. There is just no time to listen to Justin Bieber when your ears are in charge of taking in the symphony of shattered hearts from every space of green on this Grand Earth.
Perhaps a board exists that allows Him to keep track. A light up board. Oh, another heart just shattered in India. Yikes, seven hearts crumbled on the East Coast. Woah, 38,000 hearts in pieces before my morning scone?
Tough job. He should probably pass some of the work onto Santa. Santa could at least carry some super glue for the cracked messes in our chests within his sack of toys.
But I also bet God knows a thing or two about those hearts. The Purpose They Serve. The Good They Do. The Change They Erupt.
If our hearts were never broken over the cries for literacy then no pencils would come to be. If our hearts were never broken over the longing for clean water then no wells would be dug. If our hearts were never broken over the cries of our loved ones, then no hugs would be hugged. No Kisses Kissed. No Secrets Shared. No Promises Made.
I have found great comfort in a quotation by Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision: "Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God." Stearns wrote this message upon a piece of loose leaf after witnessing the suffering in South Korea in 1950.
I don’t believe that I will reach a point in my lifetime where this ticker of mine is unbroken. It is not going to happen, I know enough of that already.
Better to make use of it, and rearrange the fractured shard to make new pictures. New. Bright. Arranged. Pictures. Be it listening to a story. Sending a love letter. Donating My Time. My Energy. My Life. To Others.
Trust me, it isn’t a resume builder nor a good icebreaker to a conversation. “Hi, my name is Hannah. My heart is severely fractured by the injustices of this world, want to grab some coffee?”
But if anyone inquires about the humility of a broken heart, I think it is quite worth it at the end of each day. To extend one’s own heart and allow it to be ruined completely, in hope that through the wreckage, someone else’s heart will dance today.
