Immunity

The heart is a muscle, not a filter. To survive, the organ must be exercised. A weak heart rests in comfort, while vetted ones can be both strong and soft. Armored, a person is impervious to heartbreak, but impermeability is its only defense. If disrupted, its skin is akin to an invasion of chicken pox. The later the first exposure, the sicker we become. Our blood needs to learn the fingerprints of intruders, to let our antibodies rise through the ranks. To recognize that we are vulnerable frightens us, but we are all vulnerable. Self-admittance may seem like failure of our capabilities. It is, instead, a fact of the world we are born into, one with viruses and bacteria that target our need to connect and touch. Emotional isolation is an easy answer, but a dangerous one, running the risks of self-medication that cannot truly heal us. As individuals, maybe our hearts cannot withstand much; at which point, our DNA begins to pray in mayday, a 9-1-1 call bringing in the song of our evolution — as social creatures, we run the risk of shattering, not just breaking apart, if we choose to pull away, and feed loneliness into our human hearts.