Pardon Me While I Save Myself.
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There’s something about you that is either very smart or very scared.
I like to fantasize that it’s the former. Either way, it’s perfect.
If you’re smart, it means that you know how chaotic my mind is right now. It means you’re the dark patient shadow in my dream, always near — checking in — but waiting for the crazy to stop before coming closer.
It means you know I could get lost in you in a minute, and in that, lose all hope of surviving my anchor — an oppressive weight that threatens to pull you down breathless under a sea of needs, insatiable and unmet by anyone other than me.
So you wait for me to do my work, staying on the fringes of my life.
It means that maybe you see not just my external beauty but perhaps a glimmer of the mesmerizing fire in my soul that when tended with care can burn with the intensity to heal demons.
If you’re scared, it means that you know how chaotic my mind is right now. It means you’ve seen the insanity of my genius and — like watching a horror film — need to keep looking away from the gory parts while morbid curiosity keeps you in my theater.
It means you know I could get lost in you in a minute and you’d wind up like the other men in my past — damaged, bruised and heartbroken from never being able to fill the void that has been the death of many other tenderhearted intentions.
So you stay on my edges, throwing in little pieces of you, trying to figure out where they disappeared.
It means that maybe you see not just my external beauty (the type that a scared man has punished) but also perhaps a ghost of the inferno in my depths that could give rise to demons so hellish, you doubt you’d ever make it out alive.
All of those things have been true about me. But that’s not who I am anymore.
If you’re smart, it means that perhaps you’ll allow yourself to gently breathe me in and you’ll find that the anarchy in my mind reflects a continuous endeavor to challenge and change the thoughts that haven’t worked.
The self-hating thoughts that once led to actions unloving and to words with edges so sharp they scarred what I was certain I tenderly loved.
You’ll see that I’ll not lose my way, but that I respect our separateness, because I know that the space that you occupy is sacredly yours, and that without freedom you’re only a prisoner.
You’ll see that I’ve learned, but am still learning, to love my own flaws and imperfections, and in doing so, spare you the impossible responsibility and failure of a job that was never yours to do.
It means that you see that my outer beauty is dwarfed by an inner world of exquisitely sparkling comfort and tenderness, waiting to be shared with someone who intuits that it no longer comes with an insufferable price.
If you’re scared, I hope you’ll be brave anyway.
Either way, it’s perfect.
*****
Linda Blais is a phoenix, made of sun and stardust, doing her best to figure it all out on a perpetual journey of self-discovery and healing. When not working as an educator, she can be found in a journal, a book, a garden, or in her own world. Introspective, empathic and hopelessly romantic, she does her best to be a comrade to a collection of brethren black sheep and a haven for the despairing, the brokenhearted, and the fighters.
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