The broken hearts club

I am now living in an apartment where all three tenants are nursing serious damage to their hearts. And I always would hear what women say about these things, in these situations and all I could hear was bad dialogue to a B-grade chick flick.

But here I was tonight, sitting around a table with two beautiful women, inside and out, saying things I never thought I would hear myself say. And they listened intently and we all offered little insights to the other about what had happened. It is amazing how introspective and delusional we allow ourselves to be at the same time.

And tonight, instead of hearing dialogue that I wished Aaron Sorkin could rewrite, I found myself traveling the world and traveling through time in my head while we talked. I thought about all the other women in the world saying these things and sharing their hurt with new friends. How many languages this same conversation was taking place, over chais or espressos or margaritas or champagne. And I began to think of how many centuries women have been using the same words to describe where they are in the process of rebuilding and reshaping their hearts. 

And it just makes me feel that because of all this, we three are part of history. We are living the part of life that all women live and that this is part of life; this is supposed to be a part of life; this is what life is about. And that, somehow, makes it beautiful. Beautiful and painful at the same time. Like the sweet pain you hear Leonard Cohen talking about rather than the raw pain of Nick Cave. It's a pain that tonight I can sit with.

And while the three of us were at our lowest tonight, running out of cigarettes and grouchy that we went out on Ghandi's birthday which turned out to be a dry holiday, we were all talking about how these things change us. And this whole time I have been hoping that the next day I will wake up and be the person I was before. And now I know that I won't be. I will grow and change from this for better or worse.

But, my new housemate told me something the first night I met her, showing off a beautiful green ring with gold filled into it. She said that the Japanese make pots and pottery and when it cracks or when there is an imperfection, they fill it in with gold. So it is the imperfections that make it beautiful. I just hope that the same goes for humanity.