Sometimes what’s on the inside can be really hard to see, and you only understand the fullness of what’s going on once things go horribly wrong.
As I was in the thick of recovery last week, there was obvious strain on my body. It’s pretty east to ignore these things generally. There are also many viruses floating around, so I was trying to stay healthy on top of the that. The last straw was staying up a little too late a couple nights in a row. I knew I should probably be sleeping, but I ignored that thought, thinking I would be fine.
Lo and behold, come Saturday, my body rebelled. I ended up with multiple cold sores, which, if you know what those are, are not the most fun experience. (I don’t know why exactly they exist, but they are sort of a viral lip sore and once you get them, they remain dormant in your nerves or something [I’m trusting google on this one] and you can keep getting them.) Well, I know that if I’m stressed, tired or sick, the chances of me coming down with one of these is much higher. I take vitamins that help prevent them, but I also had been slacking on my vitamins…
Overall, the cause wasn’t just one thing, it was a combination of a bunch of poor decisions and the general healing process. But I couldn’t see that anything was wrong until all the sudden – BLAM! There’s evidence.
I think our hearts are like this too. We can ignore symptoms or play with things we know are going to burn later, but often we can’t or won’t see the results of this until there is an explosive outburst of something.
Our emotions are kind of like the symptoms of the heart. When you get sick, you can feel it coming on, can maybe tell that, oh, that late night made me feel worse.
When you are deep down feeling betrayed or grieved or angry, it will come out sooner or later. If we aren’t watching for the signs that something is wrong, it will probably come out at a terribly inopportune time. One small thing – a late night, so to speak – might push you over the edge, and you’ll be left wondering where all those emotions came from, and why on earth did they come out now?
I don’t know how to fix these things. But I’ve been observing recently that often, the first step to fixing something is identifying something is wrong. I, for one, have spent years gaslighting myself into thinking nothing is wrong, only to be proven very wrong later. But once you can see an issue, it makes it easier to know how to fix it. I feel like there’s a car analogy in there somewhere, but seeing as I’m not a mechanic, I’ll leave that for you to think about.
