The Heart is a Gate

(but first a wound)

Nov 10, 2023

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I was actually researching and we actually have a pile of… this kind of idea of the heart is a wound. And then a friend of mine who is Jewish said actually you have to change it from being a wound. So it's basically imploding destruction going inwards to a gate exploding energy going outwards… the healing starts if you think of this area as a gate where things are coming in and out and you don't let everybody in, you choose, okay, I love you, I don’t love you.

-Bjork, talking about her heartbreak album, “Vulnicura”

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Whenever my heart has broken, I have always envisioned a sort of shattering, but really it’s more like pulsating, oozing wound. It’s not a delicate thing that breaks. It’s a bloody, messy open lesion.

The first time I felt true heart-wounding was after a relationship ended when I was 27. He was the first person I fell deeply in love with. He ended up sexually assaulting me, cheating on me, giving me herpes, and breaking up with me while eating Taco Bell.

The trauma of that experience led me to never trusting men (or anyone) again until they earned it. (Most never earn it).

I didn’t leave him after he sexually assaulted me and I have since forgiven myself for that, but for a long time I didn’t. He went on to marry someone five months later and have two kids. They’ve since divorced, and according to public court records, he is still an abusive addict. He recently moved three minutes away from where I live. I keep tabs on him because I’m terrified of him.

I had thought I healed that wound. I had thought it got stitched up. But again, the heart is first a wound that doesn’t necessarily need bandaging, but opening. The heart needs to air out. The wound needs to breathe in order to transform into a gate.

I thought no other heartbreak could be as bad as that one. The deeper the love, the deeper the break. I didn’t think I would love anyone as deeply as I had loved him. Turns out, I was wrong. When I went through my last breakup in May 2022, it expanded me (and continues to expand me) in ways I never imagined. But that makes sense. I love(d) him more than I’ve loved anyone at this point in life. It was also my first real D/s relationship, and as a sub, this feels important to name.

I’ve also been focusing on myself this past year and half in a way I never have before. Epiphanies are hitting me over the head. I realized yesterday that part of what I’m currently healing connects back to my 17-year-old self. The girl who was bullied and then ostracized from her friends. The girl who got very ill and nobody knew what was wrong with her. The girl who was put on Zoloft, which saved her life, but numbed her for 10+ years afterwards. The girl who was put in therapy—the kind where they tell you to stay in your head, not your body.

It has been several years since I’ve felt any numbing effects from Zoloft, and in these last six years, I’ve really been feeling my feelings and sensations. This is something that feels innate when we’re children. It’s something I didn’t struggle with until trauma hit me when I was 17. The Zoloft also disrupted this innate process. I am now nearly thirty-eight learning how to feel my feelings in a way that doesn’t harm or kill me. I feel more now than I’ve felt in a long time.

My heart is still in wound-territory. She is still a seeping, glistening thing. She has not transformed into a gate yet. But I feel more openness there, I feel fluidity, I feel a portal brewing.

The heart is a gate, but first a wound.

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