Little Goth Heart

Play her the K-pop tune she longs to hear

“The sun came up again. I was hoping it wouldn’t. I want a dark day to match my dark heart. Is that too much to ask?”

Eh, scratch that.

“The sun came up again. I was hoping it wouldn’t. I want a dark day to match my dark heart. Is that too much to ask?”

Too depressing and not all that accurate.

I love sunrises and sunsets. And my heart isn’t all that dark. It’s more like a goth teenager that secretly loves K-pop and show tunes. It puts on its dark lipstick, Jinko jeans, and Doc Martens as it watches CNN, NPR, and Instagram reels. It cranks up The Cure as it pours over vampire mythology and doodles ravens plucking MAGA hats, sometimes sketching darker-themed haunts. It laughs sardonically at the latest cabinet appointments, thinking surely this is a beautifully crafted nightmare—artificially induced angina. Laugh at the buffoonery, it must; otherwise it’d be tachycardic all day.

It slows its pace with deep breathing and gratitude at sunset. It flutters when it hears from its friends, sees a client smile, or plays with its dog. It returns to its resting 60-80 bpm as the body it inhabits lays still after a delicious meal, bills paid, under the glow of a 40-W lamp, inside its warm shelter.

The world outside its circularity system? It cannot be real!

Heart pinches itself and finds it’s right: It only feels itself, not the many workings that control its beat, the body it keeps moving, or the world outside that beast. It is all there is, and right now, it’s free, safe, and still beating. Still as it’ll ever be, right here. Now. Covered in white makeup, singing along to Manson.

Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum.

Or, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.

(Even hearts have dialects.)

—

That was odd. Hearts can’t do those things! “Be serious,” I hear Brian, one of my mentors, say again now (and often).

Here’s the behavioral challenge, as I currently see it:

We have to hold our legitimate fears—rooted in history and the fast-shattering present—about the economic and social horrors to come in the next 4- 50 years, act to prevent their realization, and still manage to appreciate the present, which, for most of us at present, probably isn’t all that bad. It certainly isn’t all that bad compared to, say, what is happening to the people in the Middle East, the Congo, and war-torn places all over the world. (Comparison is a thief of joy but a benefactor of gratitude.)

We have to be able to turn off the news and appreciate the many blessings we still have—the many rights we’ve yet to lose.

We have to stop scrolling and call our congressman, our representatives, the house ethics committee—we have to take action after action—and then enjoy the hell out of a bowl of ice cream.

We have to put down our phones and take a deep breath in the simultaneously comforting and sickening truth that, as long as we’re alive and breathing, this is it. It. Here and now is all we have. Wind, sunshine, birds, ants. Donald-f-ing-Trump and his clown car of criminals and fascists. Shelter, safety, warm clothing, and food at the ready….

We have to find a balance of action and inaction, fear and gratitude, anger and calm, hate and love; and, whatever the emotion, respond in ways we want to respond, for the world we want to create.

—

How does one do all of that and not fall into a nihilistic pit of despair?

One way to do it, perhaps, is to focus on finding our little goth hearts and playing them the K-pop tune they long to hear.

Be serious?

Okay, by that, I mean return to Self. You could always focus on the breath, the tried and true means of returning to Self. That can get you there, following lungs and air, the body’s inseparable couple. But, as an alternative, if only for today, maybe you look for your Heart, beating alone to its own tune, in hand-in-hand love with only itself.

—

What does that mean to you? Where will your verbal behavior take you?

An offering:

Close your eyes. Focus on your heart: The sound it makes, the way it feels thumping in your chest. Put your hands over your heart and take a deep breath. Feel the lungs expand and the chest rise as the heart continues its steady pace. Electric. Steady. Surging blood through your still body. Exhale and feel how its pace is unchanged despite the shrinking space around it. Inhale again, filling up your torso 360 degrees, like a balloon with a beating center. Exhale slowly, controlled, deflating your lungs and the vacuum of space around your ever-beating heart.

How wondrous its steady beat! In love with its own show tune!

Repeat 1, 2, 3 more times. Lose count.

—

There. You’re here, returned to Self. A sense of nothing but heart under breath. No words at the ready, nothing to do or say, to yourself or others.

When we find our little goth heart, when we hold her tightly and feel her mysteriously electric beat,  we might come to see that nothing outside our skin truly matters, at this moment. We have everything we need. Then, when we’re nourished with oxygen, we open our eyes, return to the world outside our skin, and continue taking action after action, ascribing love and meaning to those outside ourselves.

The heart knows:

Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum. Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.

Unchanged, it beats on. So do you.

---

Written November 20, 2024, two weeks after the US presidential election, as a means of processing the situation we faced. I needed this reminder, from myself, as I have recently been devoting a lot of energy to the world outside my skin, and not enough to the world inside it or for its future self. I dug this essay up to spend some time with myself and my little goth heart. I found her, and we danced.

Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for reading.