Broken pieces on a beach

I heard a song last weekend, written by a friend, that has been haunting me like a ghost from my past... He likened a heart to a glass of wine, which can slip through your hand, fall to the ground, and shatter into myriad pieces. He sang also of trying to pick up those broken pieces and put them back together, but the glass would never be the same. As I sat listening to his story and comparison unfold, I became frozen - my blood "running cold," as they say. His words transported me back in time in my head. I was no longer in a cozy room in friendly company; I stood alone on a deserted foggy beach in Mexico, utterly bereft, staring helplessly downward at the broken pieces of my tortured heart, which lay scattered about on the sand all around me. The picture, the emotions, the feelings - they came rushing back to me so fast that it took my breath away. I struggled for a few moments to fight off the tears that suddenly threatened to burst forth, and to push back the intense barrage of emotions and memories that had ambushed me out of nowhere. The song ended, and we moved on to another. However, the picture in my head, the broken girl on the beach, the desolate foggy scene have yet to leave me.

This bothers me. Not that the image has come back so clearly, but that it still carries with it such deep wounds and emotions. It is one thing to feel a twinge of sadness when thinking of a past loss, but it seems quite another to become so swept up in the sudden tide that you momentarily forget where you are, what you are doing, and even what is real.

I was that girl, nearly drowning in despair, alone, lost, hopeless, and helpless... I left huge chunks of myself on that beach, pieces of me that could never, ever be the same. And the pieces that I tried to salvage, the chunks that were somewhat recognizable - these were so damaged that they crumbled and fell through my fingers like sand, leaving me with nothing to hold on to. I knew instinctually, and all the way to my core, that I would never be the same. Part of me lay shattered on that beach, dying, slowly bleeding, damaged beyond repair, and there was nothing I could do about it.

But I've moved on from that... right?

The ghost following me around all week seems to be telling me otherwise. How can I be "over" something that still has the power to haunt me like this? Maybe I haven't "moved on" so much as just buried and looked the other way? Are there still pieces of that girl's broken heart that I've been carrying around, allowing them to fester and infect other pieces of me? Seriously, how the hell did a song lyric time-warp me back to that foggy beach, so that - at least momentarily - I felt like I was really there again? How can that much buried emotion be a good thing? And, most importantly, what do I need to do to make peace with that scene? How do I calm the waters of the emotional storm that burst forth and knocked me off my feet last weekend (and has been crashing and splashing to varying degrees ever since)?

I know I won't ever be the same, and I've made peace with that, but I certainly don't want to remain broken... especially in sneaky, jump-out-of-the-bushes-when-you-least-expect-it kind of ways.

The foggy beach in Mexico