Monika Basile's Blog: Confessions of a Bleeding Heart - Posts Tagged "heartache"

There is a privilege in loving someone so much that you are willing to share in their misery.
It is easy, so damn easy to love someone when everything is going good and the world is full of rainbows and butterflies. But the true test of love is to not run away when those you love are in the worst moments of their lives, including when it hurts you to be there.
It is an odd thing I have witnessed lately—these moments, when the shear pain and misery entailed in loving someone is the testimony to the greatest acts of caring. And I guess it is a surprise, though it shouldn’t be, that there are so many people in the world still capable of the great capacity to be there truly through thick and thin.
I have watched a “gathering” of sorts of people loving each other in the deepest times of sadness. Rather than depress me—it fills my heart with a quiet joy. It makes me feel blessed to have the privilege of watching such miracles and to also be a part of them.
I have been visiting the psych ward inpatient unit each evening. Someone I love has been there in the recent months. I have watched so many families come and go and have watched those who have no one to come and go. I have watched the faithfulness in love and I have taken part.
A woman in particular, extremely ill, many days she calls her husband names. He brings to her each day a bag of potato chips, a Starbucks coffee and a candy bar. Her favorites. Sometimes she is aware of him and hates him and many times she is lost in her own world. I watched this man lose patience and walk away from the double locked unit, but wait in the hall for her to calm down, unable to leave her. And the last night I visited, when her memory was clear and quiet, I watched them holding hands and whispering as they must have done when they were young together. I could see in her face who she used to be and that she is beautiful.
My dear uncle died a few weeks ago. My family gathered, friends, his children and his wife to be with him at the end of his life. And in the midst of the misery, the greatest love shines so dominantly obvious. I watched my aunt’s face; tenderness is never hidden by tears. Love is never hidden by pain. And I thought how lucky we all are to be brave enough to be here. There are so many who can’t, so many who are unable to bare the awfulness of it all. Yet, it is simply a privilege to be there and not only a heartache. Someone entering the world is a physical pain but leaving it is a heart pain. In the faces gathered are the touches of love in their tears. Grief is the deepest part of love and it leaves a permanent mark on us as it should.
I have witnessed in the past few months, old grudges fall away, forgiveness granted, and people re-enter into others lives because of miserable circumstances. I have been blessed to notice how the people we love come running even when they are mad at us. I have realized that no matter what the distance between people—many are willing to bridge it to be part of our hurts.
We gather to show our love—not only at happy times but at heinous ones too. We people of this world. We are not the pathetic specs of humanity that some believe we are. We are all connected by hurt and pain, joy and life. And we are luckiest when we love deeply enough to stand beside or in the middle of someone’s misery—just as lucky as when we are part of their happiness. When we love, we are never alone. We instead become part of the gathering of life.

Monika M. Basile

“It’s not you, it’s me...” you’re right—it is you. Sometimes these are the truest words though most people who say them don’t even mean it.

We spend too much time blaming ourselves instead of taking that statement at face value. We know those who say it are really saying, “You’re not what I want. I don’t like you, you did this or that and that really bothered me, etc.” And we forget, that in reality, they do not want or desire or love or need the person we are. It doesn’t have to be because something is inherently wrong with us. It truly means we are not what that person had in mind. It is them and their perception of us.

Most people believe it takes two to make or break a relationship. That isn’t true either—not if we go into a relationship with the intelligent thought of no one—neither you nor me, is perfect. It takes two to build up a life together, but it really only takes one to knock it right down. It takes you or it takes me and sometimes it takes both of us. But it takes at least one to give up, stop trying and not caring.

We all have our little idiosyncrasies or bad habits and odd ways about us. We all have our neurosis, our shortcomings and our insecurities. The people who we choose to share our lives with either accept them or over look them just as we do to theirs. Most people, though they would like to, know they can never change anyone. Yet, many like to hold those things they once over looked before, those things that they once found to be a charming little quirk—as to be the reason to walk away.

I say its bullshit. It isn’t me—it’s YOU!

So many of us out here in this world like to internalize the blame or the exact opposite—wear it like a badge of honor to say, “I must be this awful person. If only I had done this. If only I had said that. If only I had worn the right clothing, had the right job, got a smarter haircut, gone to college, had less drama, been promoted, cooked better, cleaned better, been fatter or thinner or prettier or taller…” and the list can go on and on and on. It becomes quite scary to whittle ourselves away into an absolute shadow of who we really are.

Why can’t we just be our true self—without hiding or pretense and without prayers to the almighty that people do not see who we really are? Someone tell me what is wrong with that picture because it seems very clear and focused to me.

If I stand before you naked with my soul pinned to my shoulder, showing you who I really am and You do not like me—it’s You! All we can really be when it all comes down to it is who we are. If someone doesn’t want what we are, like who we are, need who we are, love who we are or even decides to change their mind—we are still okay.

We still are who we are.


Monika M. Basile

Sometimes I am not a very big person. I like to think I am kind and generous. I like to think that my norm is to be forgiving and understanding. No one is all the time. We are human and we fail at perfection most moments of our days.
I look back on my past relationships and I see I have not always been good at an ending. My thoughts and my feelings and my spirit is sometimes too angry to allow the better things to shine through.

I recall a recent ending, not too recent and not too distant, but close enough that I still think on it. There is a single moment in the ending that I do not regret. Only in one of the moments did I shine in and none of the others.

We had been arguing—Mr. Music and I. This is not something I did or do well. I am not good at sustaining any type of argument as I usually shut down with embarrassment or fear of saying the wrong things and hearing the wrong things thrown back at me. Yet, here I was, arguing—loudly and shamefully acting the fool.

“I don’t know why we were ever even together. You are absolutely nothing I ever wanted!”

And Mr. Music, “The sound of your voice makes me want to jump out of this car!”

It was furious and bitter and hurtful. However, the horrible things we said to each other were painfully true. I pulled the car up to the train station; I felt like I couldn’t get away fast enough as I was seeing various shades of blinding red. I am sure he felt the same as he opened the car and began to stand as we threw our last parting shots out in the humid summer air. Except—I looked at him then and everything changed and I grabbed his hand tightly.

“Why are you even touching me?” he yelled.

“I wish you well.” I whispered.

“What?” Mr. Music looked stunned.

“I wish you well. I wish you every happiness. I wish you the best life possible. I wish you to connect to someone truly and to love and to be completely loved how you need.” and I let him go.

He stood still, with the car door open, staring at me, “I wish you well. I wish it for you too.” and he turned and ran to catch the coming train.

Did we get back together? No. But it mattered.

I think about all the times I have said good bye in my life and mostly, I can’t imagine in that moment of parting that I want the best for anyone at that time. I don’t think it’s quite common to be able to do so in the beginning of the heartache. Maybe we can say it later, after we have stepped away and healed some.

If we care about someone, if they meant something to us, if we loved them—we should wish them well. We can’t always do so in the moment but eventually we should be able to.

Not that I intend to have or want to have many more good-bye’s or even more good-bye’s at all, I only hope I can stop for a second and whisper those same words and mean them as I did that morning. They were the only words I didn’t regret speaking. They were the only words that I didn’t mind hanging there between us.


Monika M. Basile

There are so many things to be afraid of in this world. Love is not one of them.

Being in love, falling out of love, staying in love, loving to the tips of your toes and into the pits of the stomach and even the loss of love should not be something to be feared. Yet, there are so any of us who live inside this fear that we fail to live inside the reality of loving someone deeply. So instead, we do without. We don’t dare give one hundred percent of our heart with the fear it will not be returned or it will be taken from us. And that is the truest tragedy—that we miss the most important parts of life worrying that they will not last.

I think we should be more afraid to become robots, to become self serving, to run into hiding as we try to avoid something as common as a heartache. What does this leave us with? Where do we get to in life. What do we obtain to block our feelings off as we wander on this journey? Sometimes, we get things. Sometimes, we have great accomplishments. Sometimes, we just wind up empty when we look around and notice that we stand in the spotlight alone and that the audience doesn’t give a damn anyway.

In the end of our days, those who have reached out and been enflamed by love, engulfed by love or even burned by love, will never say, “I regret loving you, or him, or her, or them...” I just don’t think anyone regrets it in the end. Those who are consumed by the regrets are those who didn’t take the chance. Those who never allowed themselves to get to close to anyone, those who kept all at an arms distance, those are the people who wish in the end they had been braver ad doe things a bit differently.

Some wonder if people can die of a broken heart. I tend to wonder if we can die of one that has been atrophied from lack of use. I would rather, if either were an option, to have the former happen . At least I would know my heart had been active in my life, my emotions had been used well and often. I would much rather risk that broken heart than one dying from never allowing anyone to touch me too deeply.

We can’t walk into loving someone with the thoughts of, “What if this ends? What if it’s not forever? ” We have to wander through it knowing instead that it is worth it to find out—no matter the outcome. We need to know that loving each other is most important, broken hearts are secondary and an unused heart is merely a waste of space. I am thankful. Though my heart may be a bit worse for wear, I am filling up every inch of it with loving and making sure not one spot is empty.

Monika M. Basile

Ready or not, here I come. We shouted this as children when playing hide and seek. There is a fascination in both parts of the game, the seeking and finding, and the staying hidden so as not to be found. There are more who are hiding.

So many of us remain hiding within our own lives. I think we may be afraid that if anyone looks too closely they will find something that is less than pretty. We are afraid we will be judged. We fear others will think we are weak or foolish. We tremble at the mere thought of someone knowing how low we might have sunk, how deep the hurt lies and how there are things in our existence that give us nightmares. We live among the shadows of our past and the ghosts that linger and we pretend that none of it mattered and nothing has touched us that deeply.

We hide. We don’t have to. We just do it as some misguided attempt of self-preservation.

There is a piece of my life I kept hidden for many years. The saddest part is that I hid it from myself too. I was afraid of examining it all too closely and having to wear the title of victim. Who wants that name associated with themselves? Who wants to think that they are someone that was caught in a nightmare, with little opportunity to escape into the unknown? Who wants to be known as a victim of their own choices and mistakes? Not me. That is a phrase I have whispered in my soul for years with little understanding of why I said it. Not me—I did this, I didn’t fix it, and I didn’t run.

It took me many years to realize that fear can paralyze you.

It was strange to think that I deserved sadness and heartache because of a choice I initially made. I allowed things into my life that I didn’t realize would attempt to destroy me. I didn’t know how to ask for help. I didn’t know that I even was entitled to help since I chose the spot I was in not comprehending exactly where that spot really was.

Battering is not always physical punches and kicks. It is a left hook at your heart and a karate chop to the soul. It leaves you shaking and quivering and stunned and then telling yourself it’s only words and they said words can never hurt you. It’s a lie. Words haunt you. Words can beat you down. Even after a voice stops shouting, stops sneering, stops degrading—it is not silenced. It is a bell ringing with echo upon echo into your very being. Words are left resonating inside of us and then our own timid chirps will join in and give the monster in our nightmare more power. “It’s true. It must be true. It is real. I am what he says I am.”

Ten years after escaping, ten years later I finally realized what the hell had happened to me. I finally understood that my reactions to other events in my life were a direct result of what I had been a part of for twenty years.

The healing didn’t come with leaving and starting over. The healing came with love. I was graced with family and friends gathering around me; the same people I hid my life from, were the same people who drew me back to the living.

The healing came with finding out that I could go on—no matter what, I could go on.

The healing came with the understanding that I was still me, a woman with hopes and dreams and a good amount of ability to love grandly and deeply and greatly.

The healing didn’t come with the knowledge that I didn’t deserve to be a victim. No one deserves to be the victim of someone else’s misery.

The healing came with actually believing it. Truly believing it.

That voice at times still echoes—not so often, but yes, it is still there to creep up on occasion. Only now, I am louder. My voice is louder. Even when I am only whispering, my voice is singing a song of a survival so strongly it drowns out the echoes until they fade away into nothing.

And I am so utterly grateful that I have found my life’s song.

Monika M. Basile