Autopoiesis

Inside of a barn is where my heart is. 

I don't mean this in a nice, nostalgic way. I'm not a farmgirl. I didn't grow up milking cows and fertilizing crops or whatever you do growing up on a farm. It seems possibly like a nice life to live, an ideal you sometimes see on screens. I know to be successful having this lifestyle, though, you must be strong, strong-willed, dedicated, durable. And me? Well, I don't even know if I have ever stepped foot into a barn before. 

No. When I say a barn is where my heart is, I mean it in the most depressing way you can think of. I mean that my heart isn't secure in my chest, where it ought to be, encased lovingly by ribs and happily recycling the life force necessary to thrive. It's somewhere else, somewhere foreign and unknown. Somewhere rickety and worn down, like an abandoned barn that young lovers get trapped in when there's pouring rain and a serial killer on the loose.

My heart is trapped somewhere I will never venture, a structure that threatens to fall down if a storm starts to brew and the wind blows with too much force, or a whirlwind of emotions threaten to swallow it whole. I have no need to find my heart - it will just break under my care - so it's easier if I just leave it alone, to do what it will in a dusty, old barn.

This barn - responsible for housing the reason I'm alive - is unsustainable. It is not being tended to, and hasn't been in many, many years. No one seems to be in charge of it, so this isn't surprising. There's no omnipotent figure, forthcoming about if there's a greater purpose for its existence. There's no kind stranger, selflessly willing to help maintain a desperate building they just happen to pass by. There's no friendly face offering to take on the responsibility, either. So there is no caretaker, for I know that it is certainly not my barn to manage. Even though its sole function is to provide my heart with some resemblance of shelter and protection, there is no reason for me to waste any effort on it.

It's unsalvageable. It doesn't have a fresh coat of paint; the shade of red that still remains runs down the rotten wooden slats and fades into the sullen soil, dry and cracked, running in all directions in an attempt to find nutrients lacking. The sinewy, deflating walls are close to caving in, barely holding on, too weak under the menacing sun and wisps of insulting clouds. I know with certainty that there is no logic in trying to fix it up. Anyone passing by would agree that this shabby barn is not worth a second thought.

If one would pause long enough, though, to decide to get close enough to pry open a peephole, they would see with pity that this barn is devoid of life. There are no horses or other barn animals, finding comfort in hay filled cells, pampered by farmhands, resting under a well-kept wooden canopy. There would be nothing but a heavy sorrow escaping the barn to fill the fresh air around them, up their nostrils and down their throat, to choke a woeful tsk tsk tsk out. And as they walk away, shaking their head, they would think, What a lonely place to be, to the no ones around. Nothing but a dying, helpless heart.

For nothing and no one resides in this barn, reflective of my heart, besides my heart. The doors are clogged, locked and barred, so nothing can come out, nothing can come in - not that anything would want to. The walls shudder with every slow beat - the creaks deafening, keeping me awake and aware. When salty raindrops come falling down, the remaining traces of paint ooze down between the cracks, running bright like fresh blood. It is like it's alive, but barely.

Barely alive, but I can still feel it. Physically unable to move, yet distant from me, my heart struggles to pump, to keep its house surrounding it stable, to keep itself alive. The veins clinging to it branch out, covering the holes and tying around themselves through the openings to keep the walls together. The life force - my life force - forces its way out, passing through the arteries into the surface of the barn, draining me to support itself. 

My heart has isolated itself from me, finding comfort in itself, and there is no one to blame for it but me. I have isolated myself from my heart. So it has learned to survive, learned to house itself, knowing that it is no longer welcome inside me. I'm incapable of caring for it, and I have chosen not to. I have no claim to it now, as it becomes something else entirely: a home for itself, still as run down as it was when I abandoned it.

I want to separate myself from it, but it's impossible. This now inaccessible, bleeding barn remains in the cavern of my chest. It pricks me from within - sharp corners, broken wood, hanging nails - and makes me want to rip it out, demolish it, remove it from existence once and for all. I didn't want my heart anymore, I wanted it gone forever. But instead, it just changed, and continues to taunt me.

Despite how easily it can be crushed under the weight of itself, it keeps going and growing. And when I feel empty, when I can I feel my resilient heart struggling to maintain itself, struggling to create a home worthy of it out of itself, struggling to continue to spite me, the pain in my chest exemplifies, and I question why I ever let my heart leave me like this, why I let it get this far. 

In these moments of lonely affliction, my brain wants there to be an opportunity to go back to my childhood, when I had yet to form a cognizant relationship with my heart. It wants me to let the environment surrounding it grow back again, give the land a second chance. My brain pleads with me to free my heart and return it to its rightful place; it tells me I want to house my heart again. But I can't be bothered now, not when it has gotten so far from me. 

Maybe one day this journey can begin, reclaiming my heart, if I can ever find the motivation, energy, desire that has been missing for so long to nurture what is inside me. Right now my heart is trapped somewhere I choose to never venture, but maybe one day I'll be able to try. That is what I tell myself, at least, to appease my brain until I can finally abandon it, too.