Perception is key

I loved you even when I didn’t and I think there’s magic in that. Loving someone simply for the version you created of them is a testament to how badly we can yearn for something. Love always has to be a “despite all the odds” kind of thing, even the odds we turn our blinders on for then ask why we were so blind. I saw no odds just you in good lighting, your soul tilted just right. Loving you was never hard, the relationship between you and my brain made it easy. The power our brains have over every inch of our reality is suffocating, squeezing out every inch of the truth and replacing it with smoke and mirrors. Perception is a son of a bitch. Twisting, turning, weaving lies that may be truths or truths that may be lies. I never knew where the version I made up of you started and the real you ended. Maybe that’s the problem with make believe, it eventually rots into reality. I wonder what version of you you’d be if I didn’t concoct this mirage of you in head. My heart has finally shouted imposter....The charade is now over. It can’t trick itself any longer you are you and I am me and our love depends on the perception of it all.

The pieces that built me

I mourn for the parts of me that I didn’t know I lost. The parts that I have shoved my fingers deep down into myself to find; wiggled around, searching for something. For healing? For understanding? I shove my fingers deep, down in the trenches of me until they are covered with blood, until I scream out loud with agony. I have to feel something, is this it? Is this what’s buried deep down in my soul? It comes up sometimes; the pieces, like vomit onto my living room floor only it’s not vomit. It’s tears that flood and flood mixed with dry heaving that prevents me from breathing. I cried an ocean once, or at least it felt like it. My living room carpet was wet, my hair, my perfectly done make up staining my cheeks. I cried so much I wished someone would send a life boat to my door step or open the door and let all the water out. I can’t understand these pieces or maybe I don’t want to. Is this pain? Sadness? Anger? Where does it come from? So deep within me that half the time I don’t realize it’s there until it is... like a long car ride to a new home in some new place you have never been with your trunk full of luggage. Like showing up for yourself for the first time but not knowing you were missing in the first place. I didn’t know these parts of me were missing. The vulnerable, sad, pained, scared parts. Where do they go when Im not forced to let them out? I have so many different parts. My fingers could explore my own body for days and never even touch the depths of what’s inside. That’s a scary concept, being a stranger to bits and pieces of your own being. What parts of me is this? What if I get stuck here in the version of myself that cries oceans and heaves up nothing but air on my living room floor with the blinds closed? What would people think then? What would people think of me If this door didn’t exist? If there wasn’t walls or windows protecting my insides, like my own perfect house. My grass is green, my bushes pruned every year but what if my roots are rotting? What if there’s worms,spiders, and weeds? What if my very foundation is cracking? Would they choose to sit in my garden then? To lay down on my grass and stare into my sun? To step inside for tea and deep conversations? Would I? Maybe that’s the important question: would I still choose to see the beauty in all these pieces of myself? The beauty in this house I built? If I cried rivers to water this grass..and let cracks roam in my foundation would I still love me then? I keep digging around inside, grabbing around for something tangible, for something that makes sense of all these pieces. Information that makes sense of how I can be so whole yet need so many internal repairs. The only thing I discovered is that I must step inside and have tea and deep conversations with myself more often. -M.D.L