March 5/6 2018
Reflection
I wonder sometimes how you feel or if you even ever think about the experience of being two humans whose lives once intertwined ... maybe my heart gently and persuasively goes to a quiet, hopeful memory in which we once seemed to share words, ideas and space less painfully. I’ve learned that memories are not faithful, truthful stories of ones past as much as they are way-markers of emotional topography combined with navigational skills that are alternatively graceful and intuitive then awkward and clumsy. I’ve learned that righteousness blinds the righteous every single time.
At this point it seems odd and egotistical to even want to know how you feel. You’ve become a stranger to me; as I have become to you... perhaps humans are destined to always be part strangers to one another; even to ourselves.
I’ve stumbled through anger and sadness and have fitfully found myself at an intersection of bittersweet resolution and healing redemption; I would’ve liked to discuss it like we may have in the past. There was a time I trusted that we tried to honor each other. This journey always held the possibility of a different destination than this one but this is where it is. We aren’t able to plan merry-making or reflecting. So, now I honor this solitary, humbling, vulnerable reflection. And I honor the journey of Self.
There has seldom come along another -with an exception here and there- who has had the audacity to be as hard on me (or more-so) as I’m able to be on myself. As I breathe in I want to know your heart and share mine, and as I breathe out I mindfully let go. As hard as I try, the rhythm is not even - even as I cling to having a consistent rhythm to my breath, there is an out-of-time rhythm to my desire to stitch what I want to hide with what I must say out loud in order to feel real, vibrant, and free. Courage and Fear coexist defiantly begrudging the strength of the others sharpness.
There is beauty in being squarely right here and right now; unable to entertain anything but the truth of where and how I’ve come to stand proudly in and with my Self. No doubt, I am still stunned and shaped by the whisper of a thousand or more shamings and the subtle weight of an invisible shawl that holds the faint but unmistakable scent of sorrow.
In a chapter of a lifetime’s story that’s fading perhaps I could’ve tried just a little harder to learn to relish the depth of the kind of interaction that unlocked the mystery and humanity of landing somewhere in one another’s realm with the intention of understanding, hope, and/or honor for one another. Perhaps we all could try a bit harder than we do.
Do we ever really know each other or ourselves?
