Today is Valentine's Day. For many, it is a celebration of love filled with chocolate + flowers + cards but for as long as Valentine's Day has held any significance to me, it has been a celebration of life that only meant one thing: find a body of water and reflect. Whether it be an ocean, a lake, a pool or a bath tub, there is no amount of conversation hearts, even if they're perfectly glued on to red construction paper in a beautiful narrative of the story of us, that would compel me to spend today in any other way. So before I went to class this evening, I did just that.
Fighting rush hour + fairly certain it would make me forty-five minutes late for class, I disregarded reality + snuck away at sunset to a park close by that perfectly lines the Pacific. It is nestled in rolling hills tucked in to a ravine whose evergreen walls act as nature's sound barrier, drowning out the hum of the bustling city behind it. Moss-covered trees create organic bridges over trickling creeks + the only thing separating the park from the ocean is a train track that follows the shoreline...
With solitude + a salty breeze, your mind tends to travel down those tracks like a runaway train.
As the waves crashed on to the shore moving the smallest grains of sand microscopic distances, I started thinking about what it is that moves me... Dreams. Music. Sunshine. Culture. Babies. Cupcakes. Rainbows.
But most of all, my heart. On the surface, it is a vital organ. It is an intricate system of valves and chambers that supply blood to your entire body. It sets the cadence of your life. I have counted the first beats of a new life + I have been the compressing force that keeps an asystolic heart pumping...
As the sun began to sink in to the horizon tonight, I pondered what it is that figuratively keeps my fickle heart beating...
... I see the world through my heart. I think with my heart. I follow my heart. I put my whole heart in to every intention I set. I wear my heart on my sleeve and good gracious, when I have been lucky enough to fall in love, I love with all of its entirety. Love is my heart's driving force.
I still remember the moment I realized I was in love for the very first time. It was July 14th. I was seventeen. My heart was filled with rainbows + cotton candy clouds; I virtually felt like I was walking on moon beams. I had never been more simultaneously excited + scared in my entire life. I tried to run from it. I didn't get very far, though. In fact, I ended up in a laundry basket petrified + crying my heart out... while subconsciously superexcitedly placing my heart in to the hands of my first love, without reservation.
It was everything a first love was supposed to be. Intense. Wild. Reckless. A love as true as ours knew no bounds so when it ended a few years later {because we were growing up + growing apart} it hurt in a way I never fathomed to be possible. It took a long while to piece my heart back together as the feeling that a part of it was missing slowly faded. The cautionary scar that was left on my mended heart made me unknowingly seal off its deepest parts... to protect it from ever having to endure a pain that immense again.
The silver lining to having loved + lost is knowing exactly what your heart wants... and not being afraid to say it. I was recently reminded of that part of my heart that I forgot even existed... but the small chamber responsible for loving unconditionally, madly and from the deepest essence of my being feels alive again. While there is a petrified part of me that wants to pack up my cotton candy clouds and sail away in to the sunset, there is that excitement radiating from the deepest depths of my heart that thinks it might be worth it to stick around + fight for it... in true love fashion.
Happy Valentine's Day.
1 comment:
What amazing pictures!! Stunning!
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