We sit at the round table looking at photo’s of life. Laughter bouncing off each other, ” look at those pants, ” ” look at your hair. ” I see a picture of of two little boys, one me, one my brother. the older boy stands there, hand on his hip,looking at the camera.
Who is this confident looking child ? All evidence points to me. Apparently this image housed the mass of feelings, that sit looking at it today.The feelings that have left me walking further, and further down a road of increasingly vague, and desperate thoughts. Ones that include, ” who am I ?,” ” if I just make it through the day,” ” what do I do now ?” or ” what do I have to do to clean up this mess ? ” ” I can’t make the pain go away, any more. ”
How did I get from there to here ?
I know the picture is just an image, that those thoughts had their start even before then. They were fed by the fear that I have had most of my life, that I was never good enough to be. There was a mistake made, I came to the wrong place.
That little boy thought he found the answer. He said to himself ” if I just disappear, I will be okay ” I have spent most of the rest of my life trying to disappear. I have succeeded so well that I myself don’t believe that I exist. I don’t believe that I deserve to be touched, held, and loved, so I push others away when they try.
Remember I talked about laughter at the beginning ? There’s a reason for that. I have made the hardest journey of my life. The journey from disappearing to being seen, not only being seen, but being seen as beautiful.
Earlier I talked about pushing people away. To get better I had to start telling them who I think I am, and why I think that. I listened to what they had to say, and I believed most of it after careful thought and practical application.Pretty soon I could start to see an outline of myself. I kept doing what was working, tried new things, and reached out for more. I discovered that the more I reached out to recognize you, the more solid I became, the more I listened to you, and told you about myself, the more depth I acquired.
I am sitting at that table and laughter is bouncing off of me and back at you, because I exist today. I am me and you are you, and when we combine we form beauty.