Seriously, it's has to be around here somewhere, right?
I have searched in every darkened, lonely corner of this house in Huntsville that I moved to. I have rummaged through closets, cabinets, and all of the disregarded, unpacked boxes. Still, there is no sign of it - and no evidence that it ever was here. It is quite possible that I left it abandoned in my old apartment in Birmingham, forgotten and trapped in those cinnamon colored walls.
Nearly two months have disappeared now since I walked away from almost everything I knew and loved. I felt as if I was deserting a part of me right in front of my apartment door, and it was tugging fiercely at the back of my shirt as I turned away to leave, begging desperately for me to remain in this place where I had experienced a measure of pure happiness in my normally wretched and tumultuous life.
What then, you may ask, could be so important as to uproot myself to move one hour and twenty minutes away to a place where I can't seem to find any joy?
Oh, yeah.That's right. It was him.
He was the decision as well as the motivation behind that decision. I was aware I came to this place solely to be with him, the man who had taken possession of my very soul. So, why then, should I have any feelings of unhappiness inhabiting my person? Well, this incredible man that I love, is a restaurant manager, so when I actually get to see him, it's always when he is drifting off to sleep next to me. Not exactly what I originally pictured while driving from Birmingham to Huntsville with boxes filled with my life and my little puppy Optimus Prime squeezed uncomfortably into the front seat of my car. But you know what they say about the best laid plans; and I'd like to find whoever "they" are, and push them over a cliff in a locked car for being too frustratingly accurate.
Maybe I'm just trying too hard to control what's meant to be uncontrolled. And, when my plans fall apart, I'm never far behind them. So, what do I do now, then? Do I sit in one of those darkened corners of this house where I previously hoped my heart might be hiding and wallow? I don't know about you, but that seems a little too "14-year-old-just-found-out-her-crush-is-dating-someone-more-popular-than-her" dramatic to me. I am twenty-three years old now, and I need to accept that things in life are not straight and structured; they are untamed, unpredictable, and downright nasty sometimes. I should, instead, feel unbelievably grateful that the person I love most belongs to me and only me, and chooses to put his arms around me every night.
Ah, but then again, I should probably just drag him out of bed at three a.m. to play Monopoly with me. :)
In accepting this, I find myself feeling a little lighter, perhaps happier than I have in two whole months. He will always work long hours, we will hardly ever have coinciding off-days, and he may never want to sleep less than the entire day on the ones we do, but...he will always find his place next to me every single night, whispering "I love--" and falling asleep right in the middle of the most beautiful sentence humankind ever created.
And now, we come to the conclusion of the search for my missing heart. In all of this outpouring of my erratic, messy emotions I've had an epiphany. I believe I've been looking in the wrong places all along. The key word there was "places". Long ago, I distinctly remember giving my heart to a person, not the red walls, beige carpeting, or the extremely potent smell of puppy in my old apartment. The happiness and my heart has been apparently hiding in the one place that was so obviously obvious, as it is with everything we tend to lose. Right in front of us, or next to us, if he happens to be sleeping on a much better pillow beside you.
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