I’m happy, I tell myself. I’m lucky, and I live a charmed life. I tell myself this all the time, and I believe it. I also believe a heart can be trained to believe whatever you want it to.

My heart often overflows, too, with love for small things. Sometimes, it’s so easy to be happy that I wonder how people are ever anything but. Spending time with my family, coming back to Eugene after a long break away and going for a run on my favorite trails in the woods, cooking dinner with my best friends: when I’m there, I can’t imagine doing anything other than exactly what I’m doing at that moment.

The heart can remember, but I find it’s best if you let it forget. I’ve spent years trying to forget that for most of my life, I lived in a shell of self-doubt. When I was 19 I got a job that forced me to shed all of it, and since then, my heart has become a place that disposes of bad things. Where I used to hang back, holding on to the things that troubled me and wallowing in the fear that I’d stumble, I now let those fears wash over me, and shake them off until they’re no longer there. I like to let the light things stay, and the heavy things fall where they belong: to the ground, in shambles.

Sometimes I take a closer look at the light, though, and I see something that didn’t used to be there. A tough, almost forcibly positive heart beats proud and confident. And I’m glad it’s there. But I think about the things I shed to get it. I see the remains of a heart – a heart in constant fear of not being enough, in worry, in pain. But I also see the gentle, cautious, and earnest girl I used to be. I wonder if I could ever find it in my heart to be those things again. And then my cruel heart sweeps those thoughts away.

I find that my heart functions best as a separate entity from my mind. It’s best not to let the two cross paths, because my mind, while possessing all the capacity of my heart, still very much has a memory. Sometimes I start to think, and I remember: things I worry about, things I forgot to be angry about and moved on from because I was tired and just wanted to be happy again. When I start to think, I start to wonder: should I have been angrier about those things?

But this heart – my heart – is a place to let things go.