Something In The Heart.
He hesitated, but he told me the truth. “There is something in the heart, that would make me choose it even if it was hard… and it’s just not there.”
One year to the day since our story had begun, and it had ended in a moment. Or I guess it had ended six months before, when the silence fell and I started spending my days waiting - waiting for a message, waiting for an apology, waiting for anything to give me permission to hold onto hope. I saw the signs, but they weren’t as bright and lovely as the signs I’d seen earlier, the ones that screamed in big bold letters the message I had most longed to hear. That he could be ‘the one’.
I cringe at myself for writing those words, but as humiliating as it is to admit, I always believed in that idea. That there could be thousands of puzzle pieces that could work with my own if I push it and turn it and squint my eyes just a little - but there is one puzzle piece out there that fits in a way that just makes the picture make sense. I didn’t want to squint my eyes and force something to work that didn’t, so I analysed every possible fit very carefully. And when I met him, things seemed to make sense. The coincidences were too unbelievable, the experiences somehow so beautifully shared, and the prayers so specifically answered. Any boxes that existed in my mind were ticked and signed off, and I was ready to invest big and open my heart.
But then things went quiet, and with the hope of ‘us’ deferred, my heart grew sick. I was anxious, itching, craving, hurting, and I ached with every phone call that still wasn’t him, and every message that he never chose to send. Confusion tossed me about with waves of hopelessness and of faith, believing I was somehow brave to keep trusting we would work out in the end, despite the confronting silence. So by day I waited, and by night I dreamed of what could be. But as the months went on, what had seemed to be so sure and promised was now seeming further and further from reality.
And then we met. Face to face with the man on my mind.
The quiet was broken with words that were worth not much more, until we finally arrived at honesty, confronting the question of ‘us’. And when he spoke those words to me of what was or wasn’t in his heart, mine dropped, a heavy weight that I felt in my knees. I felt the disappointment of an entire year’s hope swirl around me, dizzying me with questions of why and how and what now - yet I finally felt the clarity and closure for all of the prolonged hurt. Though I felt a deep grief in my soul, I knew I had been grieving for some time, and that pain could finally come to an end. I knew that if he wasn’t going to choose me, I didn’t want to try to convince him.
A few days on, I sat with his words again, and let music come and lead me out of the dark. As I wrote, I looked back among those signs that said yes and the signs where he said no, and I noticed I had been ignoring some signs of my own. They were moments where I was unhappy with us - and they came long before the silence. They were moments where he didn’t laugh at my joke, or where he decided not to trust me with his story, or where I hung up not sure if our conversation was good enough for him to want to call me again next week. I had rewritten history in my head to make us make sense - but there is a difference between wanting him to choose me, and just wanting to be chosen.
Since our time together, I had wondered if maybe he’d change his mind. I considered holding on and waiting, that maybe the timing was off or we just weren’t ready for each other yet - but I felt unworthiness all over my thinking. Preserving myself for someone who was never going to return the favour was robbing me of a beautiful future. I truly felt that despite the hurt, this man would be worth waiting for and fighting for - but I knew he didn’t feel that for me. I needed to believe that I was worth waiting for too, and I began to believe that to be true, as I let God spill his acceptance and love all over me.
The day after I wrote this song, I flew into San Antonio, where our host picked me up from the airport. He stepped out of the car with his vintage tee and RayBans and long dark curls, and I said to myself, “We are going to have fun.” I liked him the moment I met him, and I loved him soon after. I loved him more than the boxes that were left unticked, and more than our differing ideas and backgrounds. I loved him with ease, and he loved me too - with a love that would laugh at my jokes, a love that would wait five months for me while oceans apart, one that would cross the distance and just choose me. Those words that I hated to hear that day, saved me from settling - not for an unworthy man, but for a heart ill-matched to my own.