Bury My Heart

It comes natural to me to bury my heart in certain places, in the tied-up experiences of life as it was. I think about college, about Athens, and I melt into a puddle of sweet memories. I remember Penland, and while I recall both the difficulties and joys of it, I still smile, filled with warmth at the mere thought of my autumn spent in the mountain's vivid treetops.

These days, they were good, but they weren't effortless. They were brimming over with fun, heartache, confusion. But, these days -- they look good through the lens of my hindsight.

My experiences embody my ambition, my courage, my resolve to do what I set out to do. And, I think, sometimes, I tend to camp out on those highlights of my timeline. I refer back to those life-changing experiences, I draw from them, I take comfort in them. I bury them and glance backwards with loving longing. They prove to me that I am (or at least, at one point, was) becoming the woman that I want to be.

But, do I seek to make meaning out of what's here and now? Do I wait for life to be wrapped in glamour and light again? Living is a continual laboring, waiting, watching. I pray to seek balance of activity and inactivity. Motion and repose. Dreaming and dozing.

It is said that when a place or an event captures one's heart, that their heart is there buried. I think I've certainly laid rest to parts of my own in the places and people that have formed my past. My hope is that my heart was buried alive -- that where it lies, it beats.