take another little piece of my heart...

so come on!
take another little piece of my heart, now baby...

i remember screaming janis joplin at the top of my lungs on the little screened-in porch of my junior year apartment in college. those days, it was all about the crush-of-the month that i was probably stalking. you know the ones. the one you convince yourself must like you because hey, he sat next to you AND asked if he could borrow a pen. ah, the tragedy of delusion.

but after years of pining and a couple of serious emotional entanglements, i have come to think of my heart as a roughly palm-sized, heart-shaped piece of red paper. and i tear off pieces of it every time i give piece of myself to a man. i do think of that paper heart when i start to get close to someone. i think of the risk of having a little less and a little less to give, of a heart getting smaller and smaller.

on a good day, i remember that someday i hope to give my heart to my husband. on a good day, i remember that my Redeemer can renew all things, even my raggedy heart. but even with all that remembering and redeeming, the fact remains that i actually do give away pieces myself. and the biggest heart ache i have had in my adult life has been in instances when i realized that that piece of my heart i gave away was more precious to me than it was to them.

i saw this today in an article i read about the dangers of dating a friend's former fling:

"she would've risked exposing exactly what "hooking up" aims to hide: emotional attachment. We all throw the term around with such studied bravado these days — as if these encounters don't mean a thing. As if we don't leave a sizeable piece of ourselves behind every time we exit someone's bed."
- Hooking Up: The Ex Files
By Jihan Thompson

and it reminded me of the paper heart. of my recent selfish, painful fling. of what emotional attachment means and has meant for me. it doesn't mean i intend to go about clutching the heart so dearly that it's a crumpled, misshapen mess either. i think it gets bigger the stronger the more i give. but i only have one. and someday i want to give someone my whole heart, tear marks and patches and all.