Fragments of a broken heart

…the food of them who haste to meet Thee is the fragments of their broken hearts.

Baha’u’llah

It is one of those days when the fragments of my broken heart are trying to piece themselves together.

Because they have been neglected for too long,

And my heart is not an easy puzzle to figure out.

And the fragments of my broken heart are not the ones who should be doing this work.

They are far from heart specialists.

They do not know which pieces go together to make my heart more whole.

They are only fragments that recognize the other fragments but don’t see how they can come together.

All they can do is cry and protest as they keep on assembling each other in the wrong way.

The rational and emotional know they complement each other but have been forcibly and artificially separated for so many years that beginning a relationship is fraught with problems.

There are similar battlegrounds of false dichotomies and paralyzing contradictions that make the fragments break up into tinier and tinier pieces, some smaller than snails.

And the vessels and tissue of the fragments keep getting broken up into pieces even more minuscule, some too small to be seen.

I sigh heavily.

I finally see that maybe I have to patiently begin the process of piecing these foolish fragments together.

But although I am more skilled than the fragments themselves, I am not equal to this task.

I try to make those around me happy as this instantly makes my heart feel whole.

But then when I can’t please others, my heart feels even more broken than before.

I realize that some of these hearts I am trying to please are made of stranger configurations of fragments than my own.

Even those that are partially whole do not see the parts where their hearts are broken.

But the fragments of my heart are able to perceive it instantly as they are connected to them in the same way they are connected to each other.

Yet I quickly see that it useless to focus on the fragmented hearts of others.

I turn again to my beaten, broken heart.

I begin to understand the logic of the fragments and why they assemble themselves in the destructive ways they do.

I begin to perceive when my heart responds to desperation to certain situations, and the fragmentation seems to have reached such a state as to negate the existence of wholeness.

I weep, I storm, I scream, I wail. I dig my fingernails into the palm of my hand.

The heart that is closest to me witnesses these theatrics and begins to feel grieved.

As it feels a sense of failure that it hasn’t been able to repair my heart.

The fragments yelp in outrage and smash into the other fragments, shattering.

And then I realize that I need help from someone else.

I read words that I know will act like medicine to weld the fragments together.

But my eyes are blurred with tears and I cannot see the words.

I put the book aside again and weep. And weep.

I feel like the fragments are in my chest cutting me like shards of glass.

I try to talk to trusted friends who might know how to piece the fragments together but the thought of it again makes me weep and I am unable to speak.

I should be trying to help others rather than lying on my bed wallowing in my fragmentation, I think to myself.

The heart that is closest to me agrees as this is what it has been trying to tell me all along.

But I feel paralyzed.

When I do pray and gain courage, some of the fragments are able to find their proper space and I am able to read the healing words again.

I leave my house and talk to my fellow broken-hearted friends and help them piece themselves together and suddenly my heart feels even more whole.

But then my heart again breaks, shattering again into both familiar and new fragments.

It again feels like a plane has crashed into my heart at topspeed.

Only once or twice in my life have I been able to take all the fragments and eat them without reservation.

This has only happened when there is help from all sides

This causes all of the fragments to be realigned so that they feel like one unified whole.