My daughter caught me in mid-change one day and comments, “You take off your shirt like a guy.”

Oh. Apparently there is a gender-specific way one takes off a shirt, specifically the kind you need to pull over your head. 

I guess a “guy” pulls from the top of the back of the shirt, and overhead, while a “girl” crosses her arms in front and slides arms up, which feels like an awkward pretzel, until it reaches up, and over, the top of the head. 

Not sure why this morning I am thinking of this, but I attempt to try another way just for fun.

Okay, that was entirely challenging.

Makes me wonder, not the difference of a front or back maneuver as is the case in the two-shirt removal process, but the difference in the two deciding factors to most of our decision making: the head and the heart.

It is said that when the head is in agreement–referring to the subconscious and the conscious, then change has a better chance of lasting. Makes sense, because one is not at conflict with the other, and when the two together work in agreement, the mind isn’t in conflict with itself and can work for the body’s better good.

But, what about the heart? Mine, for instance, is not controlled by rational thought. My heart is all feely–she doesn’t listen to reason, she feels her heart beat to another rhythm. She is mush, and will hardly respond appropriately to reason until long after the breakup is necessary. 

She loves to be wined and dined, so imagine when she is withheld such pleasure–she pouts. Cries. Throws herself in the abyss. 

She needs patience. She needs to know her feelings are heard. 

She needs someone to not tell her that something is good or bad, right or wrong, because she doesn’t respond to such words. 

She needs to know she will be okay. And that eventually she may find love again with another. Maybe not the red love of a cabernet, but maybe a nice green kombucha. 

But whatever the variety, it will make her red heart beat the beat that passion fulfills. One where she isn’t thinking of anything else, because it is in sync to the desires within. 

Like the shirt, it will take time before effort feels effortless–when it flows naturally and with ease.

Until then, I will love her through. Hug her through. Just get her through. 

But, over time, her heart will feel less pain at the loss, and realize as all breakups do, that there were far more issues with Cupid–like the painful arrows of lost sleep and headaches and wasted evenings, that were hardly worth the relationship.