another word for broken heart

translator: joseph genireviewer: morton bast there's so many of you. (laughter) when i was a kid, i hid my heart under the bed,because my mother said, "if you're not careful,someday someone's going to break it." take it from me: under the bedis not a good hiding spot. i know because i've beenshot down so many times, i get altitude sicknessjust from standing up for myself.

but that's what we were told. "stand up for yourself." and that's hard to doif you don't know who you are. we were expected to define ourselvesat such an early age, and if we didn't do it,others did it for us. geek. fatty. slut. fag. and at the same time we werebeing told what we were, we were being asked,

"what do you want to be when you grow up?" i always thoughtthat was an unfair question. it presupposes that we can't bewhat we already are. we were kids. when i was a kid, i wanted to be a man. i wanted a registeredretirement savings plan that would keep me in candylong enough to make old age sweet. when i was a kid, i wanted to shave. now, not so much.

when i was eight,i wanted to be a marine biologist. when i was nine, i saw the movie "jaws," and thought to myself, "no, thank you." and when i was 10, i was told that my parents leftbecause they didn't want me. when i was 11, i wanted to be left alone. when i was 12, i wanted to die.when i was 13, i wanted to kill a kid. when i was 14, i was askedto seriously consider a career path. i said, "i'd like to be a writer."

and they said,"choose something realistic." so i said, "professional wrestler." and they said, "don't be stupid." see, they asked me what i wanted to be, then told me what not to be. and i wasn't the only one. we were being toldthat we somehow must become what we are not, sacrificing what we are to inherit the masqueradeof what we will be.

i was being told to accept the identitythat others will give me. and i wondered, what mademy dreams so easy to dismiss? granted, my dreams are shy, because they're canadian. my dreams are self-consciousand overly apologetic. they're standing aloneat the high school dance, and they've never been kissed. see, my dreams got called names too. silly. foolish.

impossible. but i kept dreaming. i was going to be a wrestler.i had it all figured out. i was going to be the garbage man. my finishing move was goingto be the trash compactor. my saying was going to be,"i'm taking out the trash!" (applause) and then this guy,duke "the dumpster" droese, stole my entire shtick.

i was crushed, as if by a trash compactor. i thought to myself,"what now? where do i turn?" poetry. like a boomerang,the thing i loved came back to me. one of the first lines of poetryi can remember writing was in response to a worldthat demanded i hate myself. from age 15 to 18, i hated myself for becoming the thing that i loathed:

a bully. when i was 19, i wrote, "i will love myselfdespite the ease with which i lean toward the opposite." standing up for yourselfdoesn't have to mean embracing violence. i traded in homeworkassignments for friendship, then gave each friend a late slipfor never showing up on time, and in most cases, not at all.

i gave myself a hall passto get through each broken promise. and i remember this plan,born out of frustration from a kid who kept calling me "yogi," then pointed at my tummy and said,"too many picnic baskets." turns out it's not that hardto trick someone, and one day before class, i said, "yeah, you can copy my homework," and i gave him all the wrong answersthat i'd written down the night before. he got his paper backexpecting a near-perfect score,

and couldn't believe it when he lookedacross the room at me and held up a zero. i knew i didn't have to hold upmy paper of 28 out of 30, but my satisfaction was completewhen he looked at me, puzzled, and i thought to myself, "smarterthan the average bear, motherfucker." this is who i am. this is how i stand up for myself. i used to think that pork chopsand karate chops were the same thing. i thought they were both pork chops. my grandmother thought it was cute,

and because they were my favorite,she let me keep doing it. not really a big deal. one day, before i realized fat kidsare not designed to climb trees, i fell out of a treeand bruised the right side of my body. i didn't want to tell my grandmother because i was scared i'd get in trouble for playing somewherei shouldn't have been. the gym teacher noticed the bruise,and i got sent to the principal's office. from there, i was sent to anothersmall room with a really nice lady

who asked me all kinds of questionsabout my life at home. i saw no reason to lie. as far as i was concerned,life was pretty good. i told her, whenever i'm sad,my grandmother gives me karate chops. this led to a full-scale investigation, and i was removedfrom the house for three days, until they finally decidedto ask how i got the bruises. news of this silly little storyquickly spread through the school, and i earned my first nickname:

porkchop. to this day, i hate pork chops. i'm not the only kid who grew up this way, surrounded by peoplewho used to say that rhyme about sticks and stones, as if broken bones hurt morethan the names we got called, and we got called them all. so we grew up believingno one would ever fall in love with us,

that we'd be lonely forever, that we'd never meet someoneto make us feel like the sun was something they builtfor us in their toolshed. so broken heartstrings bled the blues, and we tried to empty ourselvesso we'd feel nothing. don't tell me that hurtsless than a broken bone, that an ingrown lifeis something surgeons can cut away, that there's no wayfor it to metastasize; it does. she was eight years old,

our first day of grade threewhen she got called ugly. we both got moved to the back of class so we would stopgetting bombarded by spitballs. but the school halls were a battleground. we found ourselves outnumberedday after wretched day. we used to stay inside for recess,because outside was worse. outside, we'd haveto rehearse running away, or learn to stay still like statues,giving no clues that we were there. in grade five, they tapeda sign to the front of her desk

that read, "beware of dog." despite a loving husband,she doesn't think she's beautiful, because of a birthmark that takes upa little less than half her face. kids used to say,"she looks like a wrong answer that someone tried to erase,but couldn't quite get the job done." and they'll never understandthat she's raising two kids whose definition of beautybegins with the word "mom," because they see her heartbefore they see her skin, because she's only everalways been amazing.

he was a broken branch graftedonto a different family tree, adopted, not because his parents optedfor a different destiny. he was three when he became a mixed drink of one part left aloneand two parts tragedy, started therapy in eighth grade, had a personalitymade up of tests and pills, lived like the uphills were mountainsand the downhills were cliffs, four-fifths suicidal,a tidal wave of antidepressants,

and an adolescent being called "popper," one part because of the pills, 99 parts because of the cruelty. he tried to kill himself in grade 10 when a kid who could stillgo home to mom and dad had the audacity to tell him,"get over it." as if depression is somethingthat could be remedied by any of the contentsfound in a first-aid kit. to this day, he is a stick of tntlit from both ends,

could describe to you in detailthe way the sky bends in the moment before it's about to fall, and despite an army of friendswho all call him an inspiration, he remains a conversation piecebetween people who can't understand sometimes being drug-freehas less to do with addiction and more to do with sanity. we weren't the only kidswho grew up this way. to this day, kids are stillbeing called names. the classics were"hey, stupid," "hey, spaz."

seems like every schoolhas an arsenal of names getting updated every year. and if a kid breaks in a schooland no one around chooses to hear, do they make a sound? are they just background noisefrom a soundtrack stuck on repeat, when people say things like,"kids can be cruel." every school was a big top circus tent, and the pecking orderwent from acrobats to lion tamers, from clowns to carnies,all of these miles ahead of who we were.

we were freaks -- lobster-claw boys and bearded ladies, oddities jugglingdepression and loneliness, playing solitaire, spin the bottle, trying to kiss the woundedparts of ourselves and heal, but at night, while the others slept, we kept walking the tightrope. it was practice, and yes, some of us fell. but i want to tell them that all of this

is just debris left over when we finally decide to smashall the things we thought we used to be, and if you can't see anythingbeautiful about yourself, get a better mirror, looka little closer, stare a little longer, because there's something inside youthat made you keep trying despite everyone who told you to quit. you built a cast around your broken heart and signed it yourself, "they were wrong." because maybe you didn't belongto a group or a clique.

maybe they decided to pick you lastfor basketball or everything. maybe you used to bring bruises and brokenteeth to show-and-tell, but never told, because how can you hold your ground if everyone around youwants to bury you beneath it? you have to believe that they were wrong. they have to be wrong. why else would we still be here? we grew up learningto cheer on the underdog because we see ourselves in them.

we stem from a root planted in the belief that we are not what we were called. we are not abandoned cars stalled outand sitting empty on some highway, and if in some way we are, don't worry. we only got out to walk and get gas. we are graduating membersfrom the class of we made it, not the faded echoes of voices crying out, "names will never hurt me." of course they did.

but our lives will only ever alwayscontinue to be a balancing act that has less to do with pain and more to do with beauty.