The Reason for Me

by Prescott Lane

So for everyone whose heart is hurting . . . Remember, the heart is flexible. When you think, I could never survive that, love that person, or forgive, that’s when your heart bends and stretches. It might be dangerous, but who doesn’t need a little danger every now and again?

So then what do we do? We make another choice, and another. I’ve made some bad choices in my life, but the worst one I ever made was not making one at all, spending years just going through the motions of life, paralyzed by pain, sadness, grief, and loss. Basically, I wasn’t living at all—just stuck in the mud. Looking back, it all makes me smile now. I chose to walk in the mud in plastic stilettos, and well, my life changed that Halloween night—just as it had before. That seemingly irrelevant decision—to walk, to move, to go forward—became more important than what car to buy, what college I went to, and all the other bullshit choices I seem to agonize over. So go left, go right. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that you do something, choose something.

The heart is flexible. It has a memory. It is a cruel liar. And perhaps most importantly, it has needs. It needs a friend, a lover, and more than any other organ, it needs time—to heal, to hurt, to make peace with the senseless, and make room to accept, to beat loudly enough for us to listen. The body has needs—fire, food, water—but the heart needs so much more. And my heart needs him.