Heart shaped box

"Tell me where is fancy bred? In the heart, or in the head?"
- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

At times like this, I look back a long way - all of it in fact - and I realize that I have a long way to go.

I look at a little black-haired, pale baby boy hooked up to tubes. I see his parents praying to God to save this infant son. They ask more to pray. The numbers build. God hears them, and the boy is saved.

Time passes. I see the boy, now with reddish-brown hair, making swords out of wooden fence posts and duct tape. With those swords, he conquers every land he enters, whether they be his own sheltered neighborhood, or the wilds behind his Nana's house. Fields of thick weeds become armies of goblins. They all fall beneath his imagined blade. Here, he is a fierce prince.  

Time passes. The boy grows to the age where hair on males becomes more abundant than we'd like. One day, he sees a certain girl in a bikini. A friend. Only now, after only months, she's different. He talks to her, and starts feeling a whole mad carnival of new and frightening things. He becomes a young man.

With these new feelings, a firm belief is forged in the young man's mind; the belief that one day he will find The One; the perfect woman for him.

Years later, the young man finds love, and then finds, many years later, that love does not always endure. However, he is introduced to a new love that overshadows anything he has ever felt; the love of his children. He now understands the parents who prayed so fervently for his continued life. The young man becomes a man. After the end of this long relationship, the internal knowledge of finding his heart's one true love becomes a holy grail quest.

Time passes, and more relationships fail or never truly start. The man is very specific in what he is looking for. He never regrets this, as he is not alone, and he knows that when he meets Her, he will know.

More time passes. She doesn't come. After many trials and many attempts with a heart that was zealous, exuberant and impetuous, one day he finds that his heart has grown very tired indeed. At times like this, the heart becomes as a vacation home; the doors locked, the blinds closed. To all appearances, dead to the outsider.

My heart is currently in this condition. I fear that I have badly misused it, and I'm sure other hearts as well, in my past; a fact that I greatly regret. But I cannot fix other hearts, only my own. So for now, it is locked away as deeply as it needs to be, and my days of leaping to action to woo ladies who take my fancy are quite irreversibly dead. I'm afraid that I'm finally done with a game that I never really began to comprehend.

My current plan, then, is to stop grasping at straws and jumping at gestures. To conduct myself with a semblance of dignity and just allow the chips to fall. To protect my heart, and the heart of that boy, as I should have for years. To crow and howl with the other lost boys forever.

Do I still believe in my true love? Absolutely. I just wish she'd hurry the hell up.