Heart tax.
I am tenderhearted.
Which is to say that I caught myself noticing an aching hollow in my chest at least three times yesterday. It only took until the third time to recognize the increasingly familiar twang as grief.
I’ve been moving too quickly these past few weeks to be fully in touch with my body. It took a temporary cardiac glitch as I was leaving a “last hurrah” gathering of the neighborhood preschool mamas to remember that I am, at least in theory, not just an assemblage of parts coming together to get to-do lists done.
It’s not like I’ve been purposefully neglecting it. My body and all its wisdom, that is. It’s just that the days have been getting paradoxically longer and shorter at the same time. As spring slipped to summer, I found myself delightfully busy onboarding new coaching clients, stepping into a volunteer role as a coordinator with Seven Cities, and keeping track of a kiddo who has an even fuller social calendar than I do. Busy has been an easy place to unconsciously hide from the truth starting to become real: it’s the leaving season.
Like many Delhi expats, we’ll be spending some time away this summer. Partially to escape the oppressive heat (it’s been slightly cooler this week but still regularly pushing or breaking 40c/100f). Partially to escape the grind of a city that can be equal parts exhilarating, heartbreaking, and frustrating all at the same time.
It’s been overly easy to ignore the fact that neighbors are PCSing. That a couple of Nicolas’s besties won’t be here when we get back.
I knew this coming in, of course. We always do. “When did you get here?” is one of the first questions asked in these circles. It’s not just curiosity. It’s the beginning of an algebraic equation of comings and goings. Will they be here long enough to make it worth the investment? Do they even have time to make new friends?
I think sometimes it would be easier to be somebody who chooses not to be so open.
But here I am.
I don’t have a lot of time for surface but I do have a lot of time for real connection if the other party is willing.
And that eventually means paying a tax levied on my heart. Saying “see you soon,” not always knowing when the “soon” will be, hurts.
It’s a price I pay willingly. It’s one of the costs of doing business in this line of “work.” And the benefits make it worth it — pain and all — nine out of ten times.
But Nicolas?
He didn’t sign up for this. He was just lucky/unlucky enough to have been born to Joe and me. I think that fully one-third of the recently-noticed heart glitchiness isn’t my own but instead a proxy grief felt on his behalf.
I only hope that he’ll someday feel like the tax was worth it. And that maybe he’ll have learned that, while it might hurt a hell of a lot more sometimes, life is richer leaning into what’s here right now even if there’s no guarantee that it’ll be here tomorrow.
