Non-Humanized: Humans through Non-Human Eyes, Part I.

My human is a sizable being.

The extent of their physical constitution is intimately known to me for it is I who makes sure that their blood reaches every single cell in their body.

My pumping is crucial for their survival and the quality of their life. Our life, that is. The idea that our survival depends on how strongly I pump — how efficiently I can jump up and down in their chest — is kind of unbelievable. But I am used to it. It’s just the way it’s always been.

All 32 years of their life — and mine, for that matter — and I have never taken a break. Not once. I do skip a beat in exceptional instances when something scares my human or when they sneeze. But I always make sure I get back to my rhythm right away. My human can count on me.

I started jumping in their little chest soon after we were conceived, thus entering the realm of physical existence. This occurred inside the organism of my human’s mother-being. This sweet, cordial human being shared a part of their own organism and virtually all their physical processes to nurture us to independence. My human still maintains contact with them in gratitude for having nurtured us for the duration of nine months. They even claim that I have something to do with it, but the reasoning escapes me. By the way, not to brag or anything, but it was my beats that confirmed my human’s new existence to the mother-being.

And then, in recent times, there has been this other being who sometimes joins us in our abode and shares (and sometimes considerably limits) our usual physical space. I haven’t much of a clue about their business with us. I can’t, of course, see them; I merely assume that something about them — perhaps their physical appearance, their behavior, or maybe both — is appealing to my human. My human evidently doesn’t object to their frequent invasions of our physical surroundings. They spend long periods of time with us, for reasons unknown to me, in an exaggerated physical proximity.

Even in the nighttime, when my human sleeps, they are still there. I can sense their presence and that sometimes alters my rhythm, my volition disengaged. When my human sleeps, that’s when I try and slow down a bit. I never stop — just slow down and try to relax after a full day’s work. I wouldn’t say I try to ‘catch my breath’, as Lungs, the twin sisters, might. But the principle is similar. I relax also in preparation for the morning’s cortisol rush right after waking up. My human better be prepared for that.

Sometimes my human has nightmares. These are Brain’s fault. It conjures weird images, blends impressions together in unexpected ways. It makes me jump too fast; I can’t help it. I must make sure there’s no shortage of oxygen for my human. But I don’t much blame the brain. Poor, silly, irrational Brain — too big for its own good. Brain the fool, I call it. It can’t stop either, much like myself.

But when this other being is around through the night, my human is somehow calmer. The brain is happy. I might be happy too. I wouldn’t know; I don’t really do feelings. That’s Brain’s area of expertise. I never understood those things, besides in terms of beats per minute.

Although beats per minute don’t sufficiently help me differentiate between feelings. When my human is calm, my beats are scarcer and regular. With feelings involved, regardless of what they signify, beats are mostly faster, sometimes irregular. Occasionally, I skip one if the brain experiences sudden momentary fear or infatuation. What can I do… besides acting quickly to make sure I don’t miss the next beat?

A weird thing happened to me the other night. I sensed the presence of the other being in the proximity of my human. They stayed for the whole evening and, at one point, must have positioned themself very close to my human — I mean very close; they basically adhered to us — and stayed there for the rest of the night. At one point, they positioned themselves on our chest and compressed it for an extended period, lightly restraining our intake of oxygen.

There was a strangely active session in which I had to beat like crazy and Brain the fool kept sending me enthusiastic messages and eventually shut down altogether. A glitch in the system? Perhaps. I can’t tell for sure. Eventually, my human calmed down. I relaxed and my beats slowed down. There was silence. That’s when I registered something utterly unexpected.

In the middle of the night, with the other being so close to us we couldn’t even move, suddenly, in the complete silence… I heard a faint beat. It was very close to me. Where did it come from? A beat just like mine…

This might sound crazy, but… I have a theory. Maybe, somewhere out there, outside my human, maybe in the other being who comes and stays and goes — maybe there’s a heart just like me.