“It was not a groan of pain or of grief – oh no! – it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe.”   – Edgar Allen Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

They told me all about the aftermath of the surgery, the sleeplessness, mood swings, sweats, exhaustion, pain and confusion. Only one doctor tried to talk to me about what my new heart might feel. He sat with me in the emergency room, he said he advised to see no one and speak to no one for at least six weeks after the surgery.

“Your heart,” he said, “was getting 5 per cent of the blood it needs, now it will be getting 100 per cent. That will change the way your heart feels and many other things inside of our body. Get to know it.” I did not really grasp what he meant until the last week or so.

For my heart, beating  more or less steadily for 66 years and feeling one way about things, is different now, as the doctor predicted. I see that I am the same in some ways, very different in others. I am quieter, calmer, more focused and still. The fear I had known for much of my life has left me, I do not believe it will return, to have my heart stopped and changed has altered my idea of trouble and worry.

Yet I feel everything acutely. Sorrow, joy, anger. Sitting in a movie theater, I felt my heart react to violence and danger. When the people around me are angry or upset, it shoots right through me in a completely different way, I feel it very much in my heart, which throbs and beats from the bottom of my soul. I am overcharged with awe and feeling.

I understand why the doctor did not wish me to speak to anyone, I feel everything around me acutely and intensely – and physically, my heart is sensitive in a way it was not before. I also feel stronger, clearer, on a path. I know where I have been, I know where I am going. I have not felt that way before.

I have a confidence in my instincts and decisions that I have not felt before, a surety about myself, my body, my purpose that is very steady.

Saturday, I fell into a dark hole, Sunday was filled with light and rest and love and satisfaction. As they predicted, every day is different, there is no normal, there is just life. I feel more things than I have ever felt, and I feel them more sharply. I think my heart is overwhelmed with its new fuel and energy, it’s new vessels. It is offering me rich emotion and feeling, I don’t know if this will change or be the new permanence. I can’t wait to find out.