Dear Heart,

Hello my old heart, how quiet have you beaten in these past few years? I hardly hear your warm pulse anymore, and I worry the wall I built between us is suffocating you. 

The world outside is bright; it’s filled with mellow memories and sparkling emotions that you just can’t miss. I push others to seek their heart out, and so I have sought a new one. I wonder if you are jealous of this new one. 

I admit, this one beats out of my chest constantly, excited about flaming passions blooming in my mind. It knows me better than anyone else. 

Well, except for you. 

You were there when dragons soared alongside me and when horses galloped through fields of grain. You saw the dark and refused to stop when I was too scared to turn my face. You placed a crown upon my head, makeshift and rough, yet charming in its own special way. 

You saw my friends come and go. Watched as people left for good, never looking back. You saw another person shine as bright as a star; you said I could be just like it too. 

My new heart boasts its knowledge and has no beginning to reminisce of as it joined after you left. However, I bet if you saw how it moves and provides, you might be able to dance alongside it. 

The new teach me to fly, while you taught me how to run. I need both to be here in this hard place. I need to swim to keep my head above the waves. 

Most importantly, seeing you gone, and what it did to me, made something more obvious than the sun seeping through the grey tempest of a storm. I can’t do this alone. Both you and it need to beat together.

In acceptance, we will learn to grow strong bonds that carry us across the horizon. Two vines intertwined to create a safe passage. Two planks scraped together in the form of a step, no one thing can exist without the other.

I may lie to myself, saying I can go on without you, but I beg, don’t let me continue without your guidance. I need you, and shutting you out will just make things worse. It will rot in my core until I can’t cry anymore. 

You taught me myself, so I will teach you what can and what is yet to be done.

Acceptance of what I said to you, what I did to bury you beneath my consciousness, and my apology for forgetting that you also make me who I am. 

I am both good and bad. There is no one or the other, just a whole. Damaged and cracked, yes, but living more than what I knew I could. 

Let us be together. This is an invitation I freely offer you, one that is always there so that one day we can walk together hand and hand, pursuing life with a passion like no other can. 

My old heart, will you accept me for what I am?