Last year I had my cardiac muscle dropped from a great height onto a city sidewalk. It’s taken me most of this time to scrape up the mush off the ground and weave it back together. I thought it was fixed, renewed and unproblematic until I found out that She who had thrown it from this great height asked someone I know if I want some of my books back. My copies, I think, of Marcus Aurelius‘ Meditations, a small booklet about suffering and happiness from HH the Dalai Lama and one or two other assorted gems of wisdom. I declined the offer, through an intermediary. I can not understand how someone who has defamed, disrespected and discarded another would suddenly find some gentleness towards them and concern for the provenance of the gifts that were given or lent in a haze of compassion.

I thought it was all sorted and I had dealt with it but when I heard She wanted to give me these things back I got butterflies in my stomach and felt palpably sick for hours. Self-evidently, I have not yet untangled my emotional labyrinth of loss.

When we ever truly love someone and at the termination of that relationship for whatever reason, the scars never really ever heal.