THE HILARY HENINGER

What if,

en route to a better understanding of ourselves, and one another we lost our way?

What if,

when our hearts break, or grief arrives, in the most unexpected place, there is no explanation. No further meaning.

What if,

when it takes the air out of our lungs and our heart races at the mention of a memory that we didn’t see coming, it all comes flooding back. And our heart remembers what our mind has tried to forget. The laughter. The comfort. The friendship. The familiar. The loss. Our vision starts to blur and we hope we can hold it together until we can have a proper breakdown, like a normal person, alone in our car. Having forgotten that our body carries all of the memories we had safely stowed under our seats like forgotten luggage.

What if,

in trying to understand and make sense of the hardship and the grief of life, we complicated the experience of it altogether. That a broken heart or a future we will never have isn’t meant to be intellectualized. That it’s not anxious or avoidant. That it’s not their ability to show up or our ability to have done better. What if it’s just a really heartbreaking chapter of an otherwise great story.

What if,

we unintentionally created a hustle culture of ‘doing the work’. In the need to label everything, and to analyze everyone, we got so caught up in striving towards more meaning, a deeper understanding, and who’s parents are to blame, that we missed the mark entirely.

What if,

it actually makes us feel like we have to make sense of something or someone that our hearts can’t. Inevitably making our hurt ache longer and the cut a little deeper. That we tricked ourselves into believing you are supposed to keep striving towards more. Like we do on social media. More information. More knowledge. More meaning.

What if,

worst of all, we taught ourselves to never be content with what we had by analyzing everything that it could be. What if it didn’t mean more than any of this. No further analysis required.

What if,

in trying to understand all of the pieces, we forgot to notice that we had all of the components. and if we had just stopped taking it apart we would have seen the model was complete. Imperfect. With a few marks and scratches, maybe even a dent or two along the way – but fully intact.

What if we got it all wrong?

What if,

There is no deeper meaning.

Instead of searching for meaning, labeling, and deciphering things we let them be. Instead of defining our past on who was anxiously attached and who was avoidant we see we were scared. In trying to recognize what was familiar or foundational and whose parents are to blame we missed one another. What if it’s in fact all part of the human experience. What if it is just the way it goes. And hearts get hurt. And grief sticks.

What if ,

it’s just what it means to be human.

What if,

It was love. And this is simply the price we pay to have held it.