Follow My Heart?

So it's come to my attention recently that most people follow their heads rather than their hearts. The head is always the wise decision, it's the part that is meant to keep us sane and rational.


But the heart...
The heart is who we truly are, deep down the heart is what we are. The heart is the core of our very being and it is the one thing above all else we can trust. But what do you do when you can't follow your heart? What do you do when you can't be that person or when you don't even know who that person is because you're so used to following your head? So used to following your head that you have forgotten who you are....

That's the predicament I've found myself in. Recently today while browsing through old pictures I stumbled across one that made me cringe but also set an ache in my chest. The year of 2013 was when I had my full scale mental break down, and it was only in 2014 that I managed to drag myself out of the pit of despair and hatred for myself and I finally found myself relatively content with life. I wasn't following my heart, but I was doing more things for myself.



I had it all, I was confident with myself, I was getting along with my family, I had friends, aspirations and a boyfriend who only lived a 30 minute walk away from me. When I think back on this, I can honestly say that I was only content and I don't think I was truly in love no matter how deluded I was at the time because I was so infatuated with him and content with my life. But I was content. I was happy. Even when we broke up I wasn't too fussed about it, it broke me for a few days, but I managed to get myself back together within those few days and I was able to function normally.

That's when everything changed. That's when I found some of the best people I have ever met. I found someone I cared about more than anything and I couldn't be selfish, even though my heart wanted me to be. I entered into a long distance relationship and I was happy for a time, content in the fact I had fallen in love for the first time properly, but within the confines of a relationship, especially a long distance one, I began to lose myself again. With all the other factors in my life such as college, family disputes and my mother going into hospital and me being the only adult to care for my sister, I really did lose myself again.


Rather than finding myself I carried on that way until everything got too much again, until I started falling for someone else. Being in love and falling for someone else doesn't make much sense in my brain, so I looked to my heart. I guess my heart wanted both, but you can never have both. It's always give and take.

And then I realized that it didn't matter what I wanted. What I needed was myself. I needed to find myself again, I needed to be selfish. So I broke off the relationship to pursue myself again, to find out who I truly was at my core. But no luck I guess.


Only a few weeks later I jumped into another long distance relationship hoping it wouldn't have the same jealousy and trials as the other, and even though it was mildly better at first, once the honeymoon stage passed, I realized that maybe I shouldn't have jumped into something so fast.

Maybe...
Maybe I should have found myself first rather than jumping in another long distance just to make someone else happy. But that's what my head does. It has to make other's happy. My head says that I should be with the person I love.... but my heart feels trapped. My heart doesn't know what to do except push.


My heart is too wanderlust and free to be confined, and yet, that's what it has to be if I want to be with someone I love. My head and my heart are in a constant battle and I sometimes don't know which I should follow.

The head knows what is wise and logical and what is probably best in the long run. The heart only wants to know boundless freedom not confined by anyone or anything. The heart wants to experience love over and over. The heart wants to experience foreign shores and exotic people. It doesn't want to be confined to anyone or anything. But the head knows that you're meant to be with the one you love.... right?

People often think that the heart is what you follow when you love someone, but in reality most of it is based on the decisions that go on in your brain. The brain wants me to be with the one I love... if it even is just one... but the heart... the heart wants to know no limits. The heart needs limitless freedom, and I'm really scared to find out whether my head or my heart will win the battle.