Kintsugi and The Art of Heartbreak
We’ve all been down the road of love, though some have made more trips than others. If you’re still on your original trip you gotta tell me your secret. I thought I’d get a bit vulnerable and share a story in an effort to embrace resiliency.
The kind of love I’ve been seeking is the kind that I hope will eventually mature into what I call “Stirring the Oatmeal Love.” That’s when, after the frenetic energy of new love has worn away and I’ve been with my love long enough to grow old (or in my case, older) it might look something like this: I’m standing at the stove in my ratty, old bathrobe stirring the morning oatmeal and my sweetie looks at me from over the Sunday newspaper and says, “Damn baby, you still make me hot” to which I reply in my best Marilyn Monroe sultry, breathy voice, “I’m feeling kinda hot right now.” He would then look at me and chuckle as he pointed out the reason why I was feeling hot was because one of my boobs had sagged into the pot of oatmeal… thus explaining the heat I was feeling.
But I digress… that’s future love… this is now.
I think the word love is incredibly misunderstood. Is it a feeling? A noun? Is it a verb? What’s the difference between love and lust? Is there a difference? These are just a few of the thoughts that run through my mind when I contemplate the word “love” and my pursuit of it.
I believe love is a choice one makes daily. It’s an action verb that requires action. Believing this and doing it are two different things. Choosing to love someone scared the shit out of me. It was intimidating to choose to fall in love and then hope the recipient felt something akin to it in return. Someone once said, “Expectation is the root of all heartache” and they are absolutely right. In order for me to experience true love I had to gift my own freely and let go of any expectation of its reciprocation.
One day, I met a guy who was cool, and charismatic. I liked him. He made me laugh and he loved adventure. He had warm brown eyes that smiled, access to his silly, inner child, and loved his dog better than any other dog owner I had ever met — which counts for a lot in my book. I believe our ability to love our furry family members so completely is the purest form of unconditional love.
My new love interest and I had plenty in common. We both had the same taste in multiple areas, DJ Universe was playing all the right songs, we shared this cool “uni-mind” where we both had many of the same thoughts at the same time, and we also enjoyed fantastic chemistry.
Could he be “the one”?!
I wanted to experience deep love and connection. I really did. I knew this meant a leap of faith into the unknown. I was fearlessly terrified. Fearless because a part of me was willing to dive in headfirst and terrified because another part wanted to run away screaming with my arms flailing wildly in the air.
The choice to love deeply, completely, and intimately would call for me to draw upon my courage while I faced the inevitable suffering that will ultimately occur when any of my relationships end, as they all will, whether it be in one month, five years, two decades, or at the end of my life. Knowing this, I decided to give our budding romance a go.
When we first started dating we would engage in this strange dance. It was actually more of an aquatic ballet or synchronized swimming if you will. It kind of looked like this — swim together briefly, connect heart to heart, suddenly realize we were happy and in sync, and then splash awkwardly backward in alarm. The dive away from each other could take the form of disappearing into our cell phones, escalating conflicts, numbing ourselves with T.V., or an infinite variety of other ways to avoid the fear we felt upon having exposed a tiny portion of our tender hearts to each other.
We were both waiting to see who was going to be first to abandon this new, liquid dance that could become love if we let it. Who was going to quit the pool… take their flippers and sequined swim cap and get out of the water? We could stay in and keep ourselves safe by hiding in the shallows with the occasional dive into the deep end — that shadowy area of emotional intimacy and surrender. We could also choose to stay in and learn to navigate the murky depths of this new pool of love.
It all came down to choice.
I knew that choosing to fall in love with this man was going to require that I draw upon my bravery in a big way in order to handle the possibility of heartbreak. Yielding to loving him was going to test my capacity for dealing with a lot of discomforts as I bared my soul and shared who I was.
Remember, I had no idea if he would love me back, and if he did, what that might look like or even if it would be right for me. I only knew we had a lot in common coupled with an intense, mutual, physical attraction.
The task of attempting to co-create a strong foundation with him while dealing with a constant stream of triggers and internal stories was daunting. I didn’t know about him but the shame stories I carried were deeply ingrained and tough to uproot… and certainly not his responsibility. It was personal stuff I’d been working on and hopefully, I had done enough to get it right this time.
I also wondered early on if we would be able to transcend our dysfunctional histories and create new, healthy stories together. Would we be able to find enough shared realities to make a go of it? Or would he hear my reality and turn away in rejection or worse yet, judgment?!
I mean, what if, once the rose-colored glasses came off, he looked at me and realized I wasn’t the angel he thought I was? For example, I wake up grumpy and irritable if I don’t get enough sleep. If I’m cranky enough I may snap at him, thus shattering forever the illusion of domestic bliss. What if the meal I cooked didn’t have enough salt, or even worse, what if he found out I only like to cook if I have someone to keep me company in the kitchen!!? I needed to stay centered and in alignment with my own self-worth and believe he could handle me at my worst.
Granting him such intimate access to my internal landscape would allow him to see the real me with all the lights turned on. I hoped like hell he would find my inner beauty more attractive than my many flaws. After all, he could easily weaponize the tender secrets I would reveal. My heart would be his to crush because when I decide to love, I go all in. For me, it’s the only way I know how and the rewards can be exceptional. I’m a huge believer that the heights of love and passion are only equal to the depths of sorrow and loss one is willing to risk. My bandwidth was huge… the heights to which I ascend is a rarified atmosphere… so the possibility of its opposite in pain was great.
I wanted to dare to choose love and be courageous. I wanted to challenge myself to drop my defenses with this man who was still, in many ways, a virtual stranger. If I focused on the failures that littered my heart, I would never take a chance loving this man with his sweet smile and clever wit. I tried to stay out of self-judgment for being indecisive as I weighed the pros and cons of actively loving this smart, capable man. I hoped to receive love and unconditional acceptance in return for my risk.
It seemed a wonder to me that I might have the nerve to set foot on this path once again given the consequences if it didn’t work out… another crack in my heart that had been broken before.
The Japanese have an art form called Kintsugi in which a broken piece of pottery is not thrown out but is instead repaired. They fill the cracks with a precious metal, typically gold. This art form is a metaphor for embracing one’s flaws and imperfections and the belief that one cannot achieve true healing without hard work, tough times, and awareness.
Since my heart had already been broken before and those cracks had served to strengthen and elevate my own personal growth and self-awareness I made the decision to free-fall into an unknown future with this new, beautiful soul…and in falling, fell in love.
Given that I now have more cracks to fill with gold you can surmise that my heart was broken once again. I am grateful to him for the experience because those cracks have served to strengthen my resilience, taught me a deeper level of forgiveness, softened my heart even more, and distilled with clarity, who I am and how I want to love and be loved.
The greatest lesson I learned was to maintain my own integrity and be conscious of how I show up in this world. My takeaway is a letter to my future lover which I’d like to end as a message of hope for the indomitable spirit of my love.
Dear Future Lover,
For such risks you and I are willing to take, here are some promises I make:
I promise you that this journey will not be easy, smooth, or worry-free.
I promise that I will not always be conscious and aware of what comes out of my mouth.
I promise that I will not be completely free of the inner demons that haunt the hallways of my memories.
I promise to repair any damage those inner demons may inflict upon you.
I promise no forever love since there is only today, right now.
I promise to be as authentic and vulnerable as I can with you.
I promise to back up my intentions with actions and when I fail, to learn from my mistakes.
I promise to respect our needs for autonomy and individual pursuits.
I promise to be your biggest cheerleader and your most ardent advocate whenever possible.
I promise to call you on your bullshit, ask you to show up as your best self, and nudge you when you fall into self-pity or lack consciousness.
I promise to be compassionate and embrace you when you are defeated and cannot do so for yourself.
I promise to practice gratitude daily and acknowledge all that you provide and contribute.
I promise to accept your shadow side and know that it is only a part of who you are.
I promise to have empathy for you when you are hating yourself, to be generous when you mess up big time, and to trust you to recognize and learn from your mistakes when you surface from the depths of hell.
I promise to take on 80 percent when you are only capable of 20 percent and to wade with you through your trials and tribulations.
I promise to laugh with you, choose you daily, to risk my heart for you as much as I dare.
I promise to compromise as much as I can stand without losing myself.
I promise to learn what our needs and boundaries are and how to respect, accept, and express them.
I promise to come back when I run away in fear and wait for you when you run away.
I promise to let you go if you need something other than what I can give and to let you know the same for me.
I promise that nothing will stay the same.
Mostly, though, I promise to be true to who I am so that you always know who it is that you are so bravely choosing to love each and every day.
