February 14th - Don't Go Home With Your Heart Off
Don't Go Home With Your Heart Off
One day, when I was going through a hard time, a friend of mine handed me a note on a piece of office paper on which he wrote, “Don’t go home with your heart off” in red ink. I framed it in a shitty frame that I found at a thrift store and hung it in my laundry room seven years ago; the same room that I washed my daughter’s diapers in, the same room that I washed the family’s clothes before neatly folding them and putting them in their drawers, and the same room that I’ve sometimes secretly stashed cigarettes in times of stress.
It’s meant many things to me over the years, and it’s been a daily reminder of what I should be, even when I’m not, even when I’ve been stashing cigarettes. Sometimes it reinforces that I should wear my emotions on my sleeve and consoles me for feeling strongly or reacting about life in the way that’s natural to me. Other times it reinforces the man that I want to be. But mostly it’s just the comforting thought that I get to feel things about those things, whatever those things are, however I choose to, so long as I do it with heart.