A Conversation with My Own Heart

Writer: Hania Mostafa

Editor: Doaa Saady

Artist: Shams Mohammed


What if your heart could talk? Let’s find out.

My heart: 

“Hello my friend, my companion, my everything. I could go on forever about how I keep trying to help you. However, today is different. I’m here today to ask questions and get answers. I’m here to tell you everything I wished I could tell you before. I might blame you sometimes too, but you know that it is all out of love, because how can I not be filled with love when all I do is try to give love? Just remember that.” 

I knew at this point that this is the only time in which maybe my heart won’t be very kind to me. I readied myself and tried to remember all the hurt that I brought upon myself. How did my heart survive this? How didn’t it break into thousand pieces? Or maybe it did and then healed for me. So I know that I’m ready for anything it would tell me. I have to be. It’s my heart. It knows me best. But that’s what scares me the most. 

“I took so many hits for you. I can’t even count them. I admit I’ve been wrong at times because who says that the heart is always right? It’s not. But you should’ve known not to make the same mistakes again. When you felt that you heard your heart breaking, that was my warning to you. I was really hurting. However, you chose to ignore my warning and went back again to what hurt you. When people hurt you, I encouraged you to forgive and you did. But then people hurt you again and I cracked, I suffocated. Of course you felt it and I’m really sorry that you felt that kind of pain, but what can I say? You had to feel it, otherwise you wouldn’t have known not to trust this easily again. Still, you chose to go and forgive again. You chose to accept the hurt again with open arms and here I was screaming for you to stop, but I can’t force you to do anything. You chose to hurt me when all I could think about was that I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want you to feel my pain again” 

I was breaking. I can’t take this. Tears kept streaming down my face. I hurt myself. I hurt my own heart a lot. 

“I was the odd one out. Always. When your mind kept saying that you trusting early is ‘too risky’, your conscious kept saying that ‘this will only hurt you’, and here I was telling you to take the chance. To trust. To love. I didn’t want to doubt my choices, but when I saw you hurting because I was the one who told you to trust, I doubted my choice. But you know what? I wasn’t wrong because trusting in the beginning is never a mistake, but trusting for a second and third time after getting hurt is a mistake. This wasn’t my mistake, it was yours and I’m pained to tell you that but I have to. No one knows you like I do. I was with you in your moments of loneliness when your mind escaped the overwhelming emotions. I’m hurting like you do, but I’m not sorry that I told you this. This is me telling you that I want your happiness and well being. You’re not alone.”

I fell to the floor and cried.. On this floor, I vowed that I will take care of my heart. To love myself every day.