a study of the heart

 I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that something was wrong with my heart. 

As a little kid, my chest would randomly seize with small spasms, and I’d stop breathing out of fear my heart would pop if I dared to take a breath.

When I became a teenager, my heart turned as mercurial as my moods. In quiet moments of journaling or doing homework, my pulse would suddenly flutter to an uncontrollable speed, prompting me to set my pencil down in mild fear that I was having a heart attack. Within seconds, my pace would return to normal, and I’d pick my pencil back up while questioning in bewilderment if it ever even happened.

But my concern for my heart transcends physicality and to the peculiarities of its more metaphorical connotations.

For 23 years, I’ve observed people fall in and out of love, empathizing with their infatuation and anguish while quietly wondering why those emotions were never drawn from my own experiences. 

My experiences, unlike theirs, felt akin to scripted scenes – imitations of reality with an unshakeable sheath of emotional detachment. As I now skim the plotlines of my past romances, the only motif I can truly pinpoint was my underlying fear that I was incapable of falling in love – and consequently, of being loved.

On an early spring night in high school, I remember standing in the doorway of my childhood home, stunned silent as I met the gaze of my boyfriend at the time who told me he loved me. I don’t think you do, I thought. 

A few years later in Boston’s late-August heat, I meandered back to my apartment in a state of numbness as I absorbed the fact that I had just lost my virginity. Flopping onto my bed and gazing up at the ceiling, all I could think was, That’s it?

I felt like a bad actress, going on dates and kissing lips as I grasped to feel some indescribable emotion within my heart that everyone told me I would one day feel. But how did I know what to feel when there weren’t even words to describe it?

Every date ended the same, whether it was that night or the next morning: the bad actress returning to her room in relief of solitude.

I cried every time I watched The Notebook, but I never cried over my own relationships. I’d simply move on, happy to once again comfortably go days without washing my hair or shaving my legs.

The principal time I felt a tinge of sorrow about my chronic singleness was whenever I visited my grandmother in Michigan, who routinely asked me in her state of dementia if I had a boyfriend. 

This past Christmas, I was grateful not to be the only target of this dreaded question. When my older brother, Travis, and I stopped by her nursing home to say hello, we walked into an inevitable love-life interrogation as she stared at us with her expectant, twinkling eyes. Travis and I awkwardly laughed and shook our heads, mumbling something to the extent of, “We’re working on it.”

I’ve always related most to Travis, and I appreciated our camaraderie of somehow being the most sensitive – and the most single – siblings in our family.

“I suppose I’ll just die alone,” I half-jokingly said to him as we walked back to our car. He chuckled and replied, “You sound like an evil spinster!” 

We buckled our seatbelts and drove off, coasting through the midwest suburbia to the soundtrack of “I Know You Rider.” 

~

A week later, I rang in the New Year asleep in my childhood bed with my journal next to me, flipped open to a page exposing my handwritten words: “2024: Nora’s Year of Boy Sobriety.” 

The previous day, I had discussed the concept with a friend who was nursing the wounds of a fresh breakup. “Instead of focusing on boys,” we agreed as we cupped our coffee mugs, “we’ll just focus on being awesome.”

~

I returned to Boston and initiated my boy-sober lifestyle. Jaded by dating apps, I stopped using Hinge and learned how to bake sourdough bread. I went out with friends and came home alone. My legs, and my heart, felt a little prickly.

One evening this spring at a dim-lit brewery, my friends prodded for a status update on my dating life. I sighed and shifted my gaze to two strangers in a corner who were learning towards each other with glimmering eyes. Quickly looking back to the expectant glances awaiting my response, I finally said, “I just don’t really feel anything.”

“Well, that’s because you’re going on dates with flops,” one tipsily quipped. 

“You know what,” another announced as she balanced a sloshing pint glass in her hand. “You just need a skater boy to break your heart.”

I laughed and sipped my beer. I’d always been skeptical of the concept of soulmates, but I figured if they do exist, then mine were the best friends sitting around me.

~

Six successful batches of sourdough bread later, spring turned to summer and I surrendered to the boredom of boy sobriety.

On a Tuesday night in late June, I agreed to grab drinks with someone I matched with on Hinge. Pattering from my office as a warm wave of nausea washed over me, I questioned why I was putting myself through the hell of a first date. I darted past couples holding hands in the public gardens, reminding myself that the stakes were low.

All I’m doing is getting a drink with a stranger. I never have to see him again.

At 10pm that evening, I returned to my apartment and flopped onto my bed in a state of exhaustion. My eyes drifted close – and suddenly, they shot open. As I stared at the ceiling, I felt an eerie, unfamiliar warmth in my chest. I think I want to see him again.

~

One week later, I sat on a bus heading to Bangor, Maine while reading Dolly Alderton’s memoir, Everything I Know About Love. Trees flicked past the window as I flipped through the pages.

“Men, on the whole, are not to be trusted,” Dolly writes. Well, yes.

“The future love of your life could be the man sitting next to you on the bus.” Thank god I’m sitting next to a woman.

“Everything will change. And it could happen any morning.” Cringe.

“Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learnt from my long-term friendships with women.” Oh, I actually love that.

I closed the book and gazed out the window, my mind drifting to the Hinge guy who I went on a second date with the night before. 

I know nothing about love, I thought to myself. But my heart felt calm.

~

One month later, I sat on an exam table at the Tufts Medical New England Cardiac Arrhythmia Center, awkwardly kicking my legs as I tried not to crinkle the crunchy paper beneath me.

It was 8 in the morning, and I was running off four hours of sleep and the giddy high of last night’s conversation: the Hinge guy and I decided to delete the app and be official. Au revoir, evil spinster, I thought as I met his gaze with glimmering eyes and a fluttering heart.

But my fluttering heart, as I learned the next morning, is not normal. 

Wearing his sweatshirt, I listened to a doctor in her mid-30s with kind eyes explain that I was born with an extra electrical pathway that causes an irregular heartbeat. The diagnosis at least offered an explanation for my mysterious palpitations, but it also introduced an unfortunate reality: something was wrong with my heart after all.

With disappointment, I scheduled a catheter procedure for a possible ablation, which would destroy the extra pathway. I thanked the doctor and hopped off the exam table, exposing its crinkled paper. 

~

I was more nervous to tell my now-boyfriend about the procedure than I was about the procedure itself. I didn’t want him to think something was wrong with me — that I was right all along as I held my breath with my creeping, sneaking suspicions.

I was no longer an actress wearing an emotional sheath; I was an improviser feeling uncomfortably vulnerable as I explained to the person who stole my heart that he picked a flawed one. 

As I now comb through the plotlines of my experiences with him, the motif is indescribable. But the scripted scenes somehow shifted to a raw reality, and I was no longer afraid of being incapable of falling in love. I was afraid I was falling in love.

On a hot July night this summer, I remember lying in bed at my apartment, stunned silent as I met the gaze of my boyfriend who called me beautiful. I think I’ll be replaying this moment all my life, I thought.

A few weeks later in Boston’s late-August heat, I meandered the cobblestones of Beacon Hill in a state of bliss as I held his hand in mine. Feeling the sun on my skin as I gazed up at the sky, all I could think was, This is it.

Now, a spasm or palpitation no longer scares me; a minor procedure can fix an imperfectly beating heart. 

What scares me most is what does not show up on an EKG: the vulnerability that flows during conversations with no scripted lines, the brush of a hand during a concert, the internal debate of texting a heart emoji, the kiss with morning breath, the duality of feeling so secure and so insecure at the same time.

~

When I returned to my apartment after the procedure, my gaze fell upon a bouquet of flowers he left for me. I smiled as I delicately placed them in a vase and, to my shock, felt tears welling in my eyes. 

After feeling nothing for so long, I suddenly felt everything.

The doctors determined that my accessory pathway was benign and didn’t require an ablation after all. Perhaps my heart was not quite normal, but from a medical perspective, it was no cause for concern.

And yet I stared at the flowers and cried, wondering if the doctors somehow messed something up in a way that defies scientific explanation.

~

The next night, my boyfriend came over to check in on me. I was grateful for his presence, staring into his blue eyes as we swapped stories from the last two days.

A few hours later, I flopped onto my bed in a state of exhaustion as I laid my hand on his chest. My eyes drifted close – and suddenly, they shot open. Staring at the ceiling, I felt an unavoidable knowing deep within.

“You don’t have to say it back,” I whispered to him. “But I think I love you.”

As I braced for the uncomfortable silence, the unreciprocated response, and the tragic ablation of our short-lived relationship, my thoughts were interrupted by his calm reply.

“I think I love you too.”

~

Near the end of her book, Dolly writes: “ I am enough. My heart is enough.”

Is it enough? 

The truth is, I still know nothing about love. But what I’ve realized is that knowing is different from feeling. 

For 23 years, my heart has been beating. While imperfect, it has infallibly pumped blood in my veins – through every date and bus ride and conversation – to bring me to this moment.

And now, I can finally feel it.