When we're open

The thought came to me while I was swimming in the pool this morning: the more open we are, the easier it is to connect with people. The reverse is true too. We build a shield to hold between ourselves and a stranger.

I know something about shields. There was a period in my life when I had been badly hurt, and I became determined not to let it happen again. I even pictured it. I put my heart inside a wooden box. I nailed the box shut. Then I placed a heavy concrete slab on top. There. Safe. Nobody could touch my heart. Nobody could hurt it.

It worked beautifully. Until it didn't. Eventually, I was ready for a new relationship—or at least I thought I was. But nothing happened. No one came close enough. I couldn't understand why.

Then I read something that stopped me: if you close yourself off from painful emotions, you close yourself off from the good ones too. The door works both ways.

The thought shocked me. If that was true, I would have to take my heart out of the box. And that scared me.

I told a friend about the image I had created to protect myself. He listened and then asked,

“Why did you decide to bury your heart?”

“What do you mean, bury?” I asked.

“You put it in a casket.”

“What casket?” I stared at him in bewilderment.

“You said you put it in a wooden box. Isn't that what a casket is?” He grinned.

I froze. It felt as if a lightning bolt had gone through me. I buried my heart. No wonder nobody could reach it.

After that conversation, I decided to set it free. I went to a park in my neighborhood and found a tree. I hugged it, closed my eyes, and began undoing everything I had done in my imagination. Step by step, I pushed the concrete slab aside. I pulled out the nails. I lifted the lid. There was my heart. I reached toward it. And suddenly a wave of something close to horror swept over me. I couldn't do it. I was terrified of exposing it again. In a rush, I slammed the lid back down, hammered the nails into place, dragged the concrete slab back on top, and secured everything exactly as it had been.

Then I sighed and opened my eyes. Nothing around me had changed. The park was beautiful and calm. People walked along the paths. Children played and laughed. The world carried on as if nothing had happened. Only I stood there, confused by what I had just discovered. I understood that I wanted to feel fully again. I simply wasn't ready yet.

It took me a few more years. Then, one summer day, I returned to the same park. I looked for a tree. When I found one, I placed my hands against its trunk and felt the coarse bark beneath my palms. Ants hurried up and down, disappearing into tiny cracks and emerging again.

I closed my eyes. And returned to the box. Again, I moved the concrete slab aside, pulled out the nails, and lifted the lid. I hesitated before opening it all the way. Then I did.

I stopped breathing, waiting for that familiar, sticky fear to rise. A few seconds passed. Nothing. I waited. And then I felt a breeze touch my heart, still lying there inside the open box. No fear. I waited a little longer, almost suspiciously, to make sure I hadn't missed it. Then I reached inside and took my heart out.

And suddenly I laughed. I knew this scene. Years before, I had written almost exactly this moment into one of my fables. My heroine had found the courage to free her heart long before I had. Somehow, I had written my way toward something I wasn't yet ready to live. And then I noticed something else. There was no box anymore. No nails. No concrete slab. The moment I took my heart into my hands, everything I had built around it simply dissolved. There was nothing left to close.

I opened my eyes. The air carried a mixture of summer smells. I breathed it in. I lifted my face toward the sky and squinted. It was astonishingly clear and blue, like a window that had just been washed.

I knew life could hurt me again. And it probably would. Being open had never meant being safe from pain. It meant being willing to feel what came with being alive.

I started walking through the park, breathing deeply, my lungs filling with summer air. And for the first time in years, there was nothing between my heart and the world.

With intention,

Nadia Granski