"I have been forty years a slave and forty years free, and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all."
- Sojourner Truth

"Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length."
- Robert Frost

I got an email the other day. The subject of the email said, “Please Read: Heart Attack.”

I opened up the email and it said that the attachment could help you if you are ever having a heart attack.

I haven’t opened the attachment, but we all know that this has something to do with the clogged arteries in your heart that result in an attack. However, when I saw the subject line, I couldn’t help myself. I thought of the emotional heart attack.

Perhaps because of what I am going through during my 40th summer of existence on this planet—the stress of not working and needing money from as many sources as I can; feeling like a beggar; job hunting and the stresses of desperation that have blanketed my being, much less my face; trying to get into a college that is going to be the most demanding thing I’ve ever mentally faced academically; my relationships with other people, including my father; family illnesses; physical self-betterment ; raising my self-esteem as I question the path of writing as a career and majoring in English, and questioning myself—and how these thoughts have been attacking my heart and my spirit.

I have within me the bottle of aspirin to regulate my heart attacks; to keep them from killing my spirit. I just never knew they existed. I realize now that my heart needs to see a specialist to give me the tools to avoid the self-allowances of these heart attacks. There is a diet-and-exercise regimen for healing and reversing the damages that we cause ourselves for not caring for our heart. The regimen does not allow us to consider continuing the habits that will lead to heart attack; it tries to shift our thinking and our actions to avoid the continuation of damaging the heart. Sometimes we give it a try then, after a few weeks, return to sitting in front of the television with our appalling food choices because it’s easier.

Doggone it, exercising and not eating all the wonderful foods that we would have to abstain from is painful and we just don’t want to do it! Butter is my friend!

But the harder direction to having a healthy heart gets easier with every habit we apply to it. I heard a commercial about thinking that there was a penny by your foot and with each step, you become more and more enriched. I am starting to line up my mental path with pennies to heal my heart.

Now, recommend to me and anyone else that will listen any other steps to grow an emotional “healthy heart.” I need the advice, and hopefully others will glean some insight from it.

Labels: My Writing