After a deep opening of the heart is followed by terrible pain, the next time the heart opens, the body remembers.  The next time the energy in one’s chest swirls and warms and expands and moves in just that same way again, the body remembers the anguish that followed it.

It could be months or years later.  Someone comes along and stirs you in a way you that you have not been stirred since.  Quickly, your hard-earned peace is ruffled by flashbacks of grief, of things gone awry.  Why is feeling love again so painful?  It almost feels wrong. You run from the pain of it.  Close the heart back up.  Feel nothing.  Return to that peace, to the calm waters of not caring.  You have come to like this peaceful “not caring.”

Apathy is soothing.  Apathy rapidly protects the body from memories of hell.

Now I understand.  I have always interpreted apathy or coldness as the loss of a bond, and in many ways it is.  However, apathy began creeping into my own heart not because a bond had died, but because a bond was deepening.  Ironically, apathy can appear just as love is being born.

Recently, I met for tea with a former partner to catch up and contemplate friendship.  Within two days, however, his warmth and enthusiasm turned to distance and apathy.  I have wanted very much to understand this apathy.  I witnessed this tranformation in him many times before, and it never made sense.  At the height of connection, at the precipice of intimacy, he would become a stranger.  He would tell me that his heart was not opening, that he felt little for me, wanted nothing of me, and would scarcely feel it if I moved on.  How does a bond transform from conscious to meaningless in such a short time?

Whenever I ask a question of the universe, the answer comes quickly from the teacher of all teachers, life experience.  What is the meaning of apathy?  Recently, my bond with my current partner deepened and blossomed even more.  He expressed his love, and I expressed mine.  Moments of incredible joy, pleasure, and gratitude have filled each day.  Our mutual trust and admiration have brought us closer.  Being close to him never breeches my sense of wholeness.

Just as the joy was mounting, however, sensations of old pain washed in.  I was baffled.  It was completely at odds with my situation.  My heart was stirring for the first time in six months, and with it, I felt pain.  Pain?  “Where is this coming from?” I thought.  “Why am I feeling like this?”  I never worry about losing him.  I know he will always be a friend to me, yet this illogical wave of grief and loneliness began to fill my body.  Loneliness!  I thought perhaps someone in my life was experiencing terrible grief, but I couldn’t place it.

Suddenly, I found myself closing slightly and pulled to turn away.  I found it easy to slip into feeling nothing.  I was tempted to retreat to that time in which he was just a new acquaintance.  What happened?

I remembered.  The memory was not intellectual at all.  It was purely a body memory, which made it especially confusing, especially since it contradicted everything that was taking place in my life.  I was revisiting an old place, the very place I was the last time I felt a loving bond.  The last time this flower was open, it was shredded in a hail storm.  Loneliness is like curling up with an ice sickle.  Rejection is like being impaled by it.  My body remembered the pain it felt when I last gave my heart to someone.  That is all.

And for a moment, I fled.  I fled to the soothing numbness of indifference, of putting someone out of my mind, of telling myself he is not that integral, not a part of my heart.  I made myself believe that he has not opened me.  I closed my eyes.  I closed myself.

I changed my perspective so well, I made it seem as though the change were happening in him, not me. I looked hard at the two lovers about to kiss, and I see the silhouette of a vase.  Oh, there is nothing here to stir me!  Just a stupid vase.  I can walk on, feeling nothing.

In a variation on the face/vase illusion, a drawing shows a school of dolphins… or two lovers:

I could make it seem that he was to blame for my apathy.  And with that, I remember my former partner’s frequent words to me: “My heart is just not opening.  Sorry.”

He was remembering pain.  A pain that threatened him deeply.  I could see it in his face, a flash of terror quickly repressed, a tightening as he regained his composure, determined not to go down that road.

Tightness evolves into apathy.  Apathy evolves into dislike.  Dislike evolves into anger, irritation or bitterness.  And the bond dies.  Often, the other person watches this progression like watching a loved one develop Alzheimer’s.  It is a painful progression to witness, because the will to heal it passes away too.

But I see the pain inside it as clearly as I would see a hat on his head, and my heart opens in compassion. Compassion never hurts. So healing, so heedless of separation, compassion soothes even the damage of indifference and bitterness.  When someone plunges their sword into your body, and you are filled with compassion, you are like a glowing cloud.  It simply does not hurt.  It simply does not injure you.

And where there is no pain, there is no closing.  Why close? Even in the presence of apathy, my heart is still open, and the opening itself fills me with inexplicable bliss.  My body remembers bliss, and I open more.  There is no end to it.  So, just when love is most dead, I am glowing with it!  So strange.  I cannot wrap my mind around it.  I am agog.

I spoke with my dear love about all of my feelings.  They are about me, not him, and just as quickly as they appeared, they have faded.  The whole experience was, I think, just an answer to my query.