The Beating Heart
Ruth sat very still in the chair, contemplating what she was about to do. Was she sure she really was ready to do this? It would be so much easier to continue doing life the way that she had been. She enjoyed being in control. She wouldn’t get hurt that way. Sure, it might get lonely, but that was endurable.
No.
She had lived alone for too long. It was time to trust. It was time to really live.
She carefully reached down to her chest and pulled.
Ouch.
That hurt more than she thought it would.
But she was determined and pulled harder and harder until at last she was holding her heart cradled in her hands. It pulsed and throbbed.
She stood up very slowly and gingerly began to walk across the room, taking care not to trip or bump into anything. After all, this was her heart, the core of her being and she didn’t want anything to happen to it.
In the corner was Tani, a girl that she had been getting to know in the past few weeks. She decided that she was ready to share her heart with Tani.
Ruth walked up and told Tani that she had a gift for her. When Tani looked up, Ruth held out her cupped hands with her beating heart.
Tani looked confused.
“This is the gift?” she said. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
Ruth was crushed. She stood stock still for a few more minutes as Tani went back to what she had been doing. She didn’t even look up again.
Ruth went and sat down with her legs crossed on the opposite side of the room. Her heart had begun to bleed, oozing all down her arms and dripping onto her legs. At first she just let it bleed but after a while she recovered her strength enough to find a towel to wrap it in. She rocked back and forth, holding her heart.
Had she been wrong to offer Tani her heart? Was there something wrong with it? Was it ugly, deformed, too big, too small? If it had been different would Tani have taken it and loved it?
No.
Ruth knew that just because one person rejected her heart that did not mean that it had no value. “This is not truth,” she repeated over and over to herself.
While she was rocking and repeating her mantra, she was suddenly startled by a hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see Ella, a girl she barely knew.
“Excuse me,” said Ella. “What do you have there?” she gestured toward Ruth’s heart.
Ruth blinked back tears.
“It is my heart. I tried to give it to someone and they didn’t want it.”
”Can I have it?” said Ella kindly. “I promise I will take good care of it.”
”Are you sure?” Ruth said disbelievingly. “Why would you want to have it? I hardly know you.”
”I have been watching you. You are trustworthy. I want to be your friend.”
Ruth smiled and very carefully held out her heart. It was a little worse for wear. There were some rips in it and the towel that surrounded it was all bloody. But Ella didn’t seem to notice. She held it reverently.
And Ruth was happy. For the first time, someone cared for her. Someone understood the importance of being entrusted with her heart. She felt special. She felt loved.
Time went by. And it seemed as if the reverence in which Ella had held her heart was starting to fade. Sometimes she seemed as if it was a burden to be carrying Ruth’s heart around with her. She stopped cradling it in her arms and stuck it in her back pocket. Ruth didn’t like her heart being carried in such a careless manner. But she felt like she did not have a right to complain. After all, Ella had offered to take her gift.
One day, Ella suddenly decided to change her outfit. This new skirt had no back pocket. She stood for a moment holding Ruth’s heart in her hands. It was beating quieter now. It barely pulsed. It really didn’t look like much. What would it matter if she just threw it away?
She looked furtively over her shoulder and when she was sure no one was watching, she chucked the heart in the trash.
Then she left the room without looking back.
Ruth saw her walk away.
She noticed that she was not holding anything. And she wondered what had happened to her heart. Then she saw the shiny trash can and she knew.
Had she done something to make Ella throw it away? Was her heart so disposable that it could be tossed in the trash without a word of explanation?
There was an excruciating pain in her chest that brought her to her knees. For a while all she could do was lie there breathing heavily. The pain cut into the core of her being and she lay on the floor all through the dark night struggling for breath.
But then the morning came. And with it came hope.
She pulled herself to her knees and crawled towards the trashcan. It took her a long time and she had to stop and rest several times.
But finally she made it and looked inside. There was her heart, nestled among old banana peels and coffee grounds. It was bruised and bloody and she had a sneaking suspicion that it was dead.
But she took it out and washed it off. She wrapped it carefully in bandages and sat down on the ground again. She sat there for a long time.
While she sat there, many people came up to her to check and see if she was okay. They sometimes stayed a while, not even talking sometimes, just being with her in her pain. Sometimes she told them the story of how she had first been rejected and then thrown away. Sometimes she cried. Sometimes the pain was so bad that she couldn’t feel at all.
All of the people who came and sat with Ruth encouraged her to try again.
“Not everyone is like Tani and Ella,” they said. “Yes, it will always be risky and it will sometimes hurt. But you need to keep trying.”
Ruth listened and accepted their hugs and thought a lot.
As she had been listening she noticed that her heart had started getting a little pinker and had barely started to beat again.
After some more time had passed she held it up to the light to see it more closely.
As she examined it she saw some scar tissue down towards the left.
“That was the rip from Tani,” she thought. And up on the top there were 4 huge gashes left by the ordeal with Ella. But the scar tissue seemed to have healed up and Ruth was glad that it was there to remind her of where she had been.
And her heart seemed to be beating stronger now than it had before.
“Maybe it is time now,” she thought. “Maybe I can handle trying again.”
She thought of all of the people who had been sitting with her the past few weeks. And as she did there were three faces that stayed in her mind. She scanned the room and saw them sitting at a table together.
Ruth began to take the bandages off of her heart. When it lay there exposed, she took a deep breath and stood up. And as she did, she felt a peace wash over her.
“Yes, this is scary. But this is right. This is how it is supposed to be,” she thought.
And she crossed the room to her friends with her heart in her outstretched hands.
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