I think I’m just one of those brokenhearted people. No matter how much time passes, there’s still a crack in the center of a heart that’s held too much love and grief in equal measure. They say that crack is where the light gets in, but it’s also where the rain leaks through. It’s the place where cold sweeps in to chill the bones. Life, rushing through that crack, makes the most terrible howl of anguish. I am always just a little brokenhearted, and I know that I will never learn any other way to be.
I’ve tried. I tried to paste over the crack. When that didn’t work, I painted it into a smile everyone could see, but no one could really know. I used it to look out at a world that always seemed equally beautiful and treacherous. I tended the crack, waiting for time to do its work of healing. But time never did. If anything, it just cracked it wider, every loss an added pressure to an already fragile heart.
Today, I got the call that my foster dog, the elderly poodle named MeeMaw, has an adoption interview coming up. It was not joyous news. She is old, medically fragile, and very much attached to me. As I am to her. I cannot afford another adoption, another round of vet bills, when I am so clearly hanging on to my life by the very tips of my fingernails. But I love her, and I had hoped — selfishly — that her great age and health problems would make people look away, look at other options for adoption. I had hoped that I could care for her for the rest of her life, without the subsequent vet bills.
I know that’s not fair to the Humane Society, but I think it’s fair enough for MeeMaw. She is loved, safe, and very much wanted right where she is. The idea that someone else might step in to become her family breaks my heart, and my heart is always breaking.
I knew that this was the risk of fostering. Some of the fosters have been with me so long that I can almost forget that they are not mine. They feel like they belong to me, and I to them, until the call comes. I don’t mind it so much when they end up in a place even better suited to provide them with the time, attention, and affection they need. On those days, I feel good about serving as that in-between place. But sometimes, the attachment runs deeper, and I remain unconvinced that anyone can ever love them the way that I do.
I signed up for this heartache.
I signed up knowing that it might break my heart. I was there when MeeMaw had her first seizure. I was the one who cared for her in those terrifying seconds or minutes and who took her to the vet and who took her home and watched the second seizure unfold. I am the one who puts her medication in cheese so she’ll take it with ease, and I’m the one she wants to sit beside or sleep beside or walk beside. I bought her a dress and took her to work, and I have loved her with everything I’ve got.
And I know that even if she gets adopted, even if it breaks my heart, I will still do what I do. I’ll continue to foster. I’ll be the one who steps up for animals with no place (yet) to go. I’ll break my heart open again and again because even though I know it hurts, I don’t know how to live in this world without this cracked-open heart.
I don’t think I ever have. I’ve always given so much of myself, and it’s always been painful. But the idea of closing up shop and just refusing to love anyone or anything again just isn’t an option. I’ll keep wearing my battered heart on my sleeve, and I’ll accept that the price will always be pain.
But it’s more than that.
It’s a funny sort of gratitude, too.
The cat I adopted in the spring was dead by winter of natural causes, an unexpected loss that left me crying and screaming in equal measure. I loved her, and the loss felt immense, but I felt such a privilege to have known her.
I felt that same gratitude each time I have loved, even when I have lost. I know that this is the best part of me. This hurting part. This wide crack in a heart wall that can never contain all the love I feel, any more than it can contain the grief. This immense sense of beauty wrapped up in all that loss. I cannot regret the love, and I cannot stop the grief from rolling over me, often knocking me flat. I always get up. How else will I set it all into motion again, this endless tide of loving and losing that so often seems to define me?
How can I regret the love when it brought, however briefly, so much beauty and joy? I think about Ember, the cat I lost so soon, and how she came to me feral but ended up sleeping nose-to-nose with me. How she’d chatter and chortle about her day. How I became her favorite person. I think about MeeMaw, the terror in her eyes after her seizure, and the way I held her even as urine ran down my clothes. The way her eyes follow my every movement, and how she wants to be wherever it is that I am because I am home for her.
I look back further at a relationship where, for just a moment in time, I felt loved and cared for. I think about the laughter and flowing conversation, and how this one person made me believe in soulmates before making me question everything I believed. But for a little while, there was magic, and I am grateful.
It’s why I keep putting my heart on the line.
It’s the reason I never learn. I know, I know, I know that the little foster dog could be adopted — or she could die in my care. I know that my heart will be broken either way. But I don’t run from the love. I never have. I open up my arms even as the crack in my heart gets wider in anticipation of the coming loss. I will love, and I will lose, but I will love.
And maybe that’s the point of all this. I will love. I do love. I am love. I keep loving even when I know that the hurt can sometimes feel overwhelming in its intensity. I know the cost, and I accept it. Where do I sign, what waiver do I need to scrawl my signature across to acknowledge that every single ounce of love means that I will accept an equal ounce of pain? Because I will sign it. And I will sign it. And I will sign it.
I’ll live like every other brokenhearted person, feeling too much, but brave enough to hold that love and pain with both hands and an open heart. You might ask me why, but I know that someone has to do it. In a world with so much fear and so much hate, there have to be people who hold so much love. There has to be a balance. Even if it means living with a cracked-open heart that always hurts a little. Even if it means running toward love with tears rolling down my face.
A note from the author: MeeMaw did not, in fact, get adopted. She is elderly with health problems, and as much as I want her to stay with me, I was so offended on her behalf that she wasn’t wanted. Well, I want her. It’s good for people to know their limitations, but I’m glad MeeMaw has me, a strong advocate that even old dogs and sick dogs deserve all the love we have to give.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: PRIYANSHU Kumar on Unsplash
