Heart On Your Sleeve

The other day, I was thinking about the benefits and disadvantages of wearing your heart on your sleeve.  I have always been a "heart-wearer."  I know no other way; although sometimes it has gotten me into trouble.  More than sometimes, in fact.  I've often thought about "turning back," and becoming a person who can repress his/her emotions, and wear a cloak and a mask all day long.  It must be theatre all day, all play-acting, a relief, and then when it's dark, I suppose, one can peel off and leave his/her "outerwear" in the cloakroom overnight.   Life must feel safer inside a pretense and a disguise; life must be a whole lot easier.  I have always been envious, and yet...And yet, I cannot don these garments.  I am a torn woman with a button to be replaced, and a hole in my sleeve, where my heart keeps falling through.  I am doing penance for it though, let me tell you.  I always think that if I were Christian, I would give forthrightness up for Lent.  I could try the self-denial on for size, just for a day, or a week, or a month.  But I'm not Christian, and I think I might die inside a little every day if I curtailed myself.  I would no longer be tripping all over my heart all day long, and perhaps not always be so broken-hearted about so many things, but at least, I know that the resilient little muscle would still be there, contracting and pumping, and doing its job as a heart, instead of a blank doing a void.  Anyway, my ideas of this system of hearts worn-on-the-outside really manifested itself the other day when I was watching, by chance, the Olympic ice-skating contenders.  I am not one, to watch the Olympics, but here, I was mesmerized by Evan Lysacek's performance of "The Firebird." Here, I thought to myself, is a man wearing his heart on his sleeve, and on his skates.  This is not run-of-the-mill skating.  This is not a performance, this is humanity pure and simple set on the ice. It was beautiful, and inescapable, and my insides ached because I saw what this young man was giving, and what he was giving was everything.  Everything.  It was all heart and soul, and practice, and discipline, and blood, and sweat and tears.  And just writing what this man did that day in front of all those people cheering for him makes me feel a bit wobbly.  I feel that his great achievement was poured out and solidified like the ice he was skating on, and maybe along the way, he might have questioned his own motives and ways of acting, but here the end result justified all those queries.  I, unlike Evan Lysacek, have not yet come upon the "end result," and so I am left right now with all these doubts.  I think to myself that I would not be in this position of looking for a permanent job for so long perhaps, if I had a heart-guard and a good sturdy mask.  But then I realize that maybe my time on the ice has not yet arrived, and until that time, be happy in the notion that I am me, and no one else, and chill.