On my healing journey I am discovering that as I let go of heart walls and heal from past emotional trauma everything beautiful about the world intensifies for me. The sky is bluer, the clouds are fluffier, colors are more vivid, and relationships are more fulfilling. For the past two weeks I have been slowly editing my photos from my most recent visit to the New York Botanical Garden: a visit where I spent a few hours mostly making macro shots and marveling at the tiniest details of the flowers through my lens. It’s taken me this long, because each photo is a wonder to me, and I can’t quickly move past it to the next. Every detail enthralls me. So instead of blowing through the photos in a day or two like I used to do, I am dwelling on each one, even exporting many of them just to gaze at for extended periods of time before moving on.
Yesterday I was hanging out in the chat of one of my favorite Twitch streamers while I edited photos. He has a lovely singing voice and sings for us whenever someone raids his channel. After a raid he did a rendition of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” that moved me to tears. I don’t often cry over music; it’s probably been 5 or 6 years since I did. But my heart has been more open and was especially raw yesterday. I literally could not move while he sang, and by the end of his song there were tears in my eyes. In the environment I grew up in that kind of visceral reaction would have been grounds for teasing (unless it happened in church, of course, and maybe even then), so over the years I built heart walls to keep myself from feeling non-religious things so deeply. Learning how to let go and truly feel again on that level has been a gift, and I wouldn’t have been able to soak in the beauty of his song so deeply had my heart not been healing and open.
The openness also means I am more sensitive to pain too. But frankly, I have felt intense emotional pain much of my life and for far too many years it was to the exclusion of joy. So I’ll gladly take this. After all, the people I am close to now are safe for me to be vulnerable with, I enjoy meeting new people I can be vulnerable with, I have developed a healthy dose of discernment about when/how/if to show my vulnerability, and I have no qualms about shutting the door to people who are not safe enough for me. My willingness to take this healing journey has been one of the greatest gifts I have ever given myself, because in spite of knowing just how ugly some aspects of life can be, I am able to experience and appreciate intense beauty.