With Certainty: Healing My Love In A Mirror.
With certainty, I will give away my heart again. I’ll do it recklessly, as I always do, with little thought to consequence.
I’ll find another passionate beautiful mess of a man, all sensitive and wounded and misunderstood, just like me. It’s like I’m trying to love myself from the outside by finding my reflection, only mirrored in masculine form.
And I know this is not the way to go about such things, but I’m always finding myself walking the other direction with my face turned to look behind me, unable to break my gaze with all that is so broken, yet dazzling.
With curiosity, I will succumb to the draw and the wonder and the hope that sparkles in my eyes when I recognize myself in you, a novel flirty mystery that promises to be unraveled in the most delicious way.
It’s like you’re a déjà vu stranger, singing the silent lyrics of a song I wrote only for me, and I’ll be all inside my head, trying to crack your code that I’ve now forgotten I am the author of. And though I know you’re no impostor, I’ll show you a pretty little glimpse of my scariest flaws and dare you to run away from yourself.
With anxiety, we will navigate the familiar internal conflict that develops when we both realize we can’t be faulty enough to make the other run away. It’s like we both have one foot in with the other poised to bolt if what draws us together becomes a threat to the walls of the mirrored fortress that we’ve so carefully built.
And we know this dance so well, its choreography now a second nature as we push and pull to the rhythm of vulnerability and protection in its excitement and calming cruel comfort.
With naïveté, I will invest in the notion that we can heal each other. That two tentative lovers with complimentary wounding can coax out an even semi-comfortable balance of daring and of acceptance and of the safety that comes from being allowed to be exactly who you are.
That they can manifest a gentle patient alchemy to quell the awesome terror of vulnerability just enough so they can fall together mystically as well as humanly. And as much as I believe in such romantic notions, I know none of this works if we’re not on the same page, and sadly I must accept that we’re not.
With dignity, I’ll walk away, feigning strength as I have times before, but in the hollow loneliness of our absence, we’ll both know that I’m still silently reaching out for you with my heart.
It’s like I can sense you thinking about me in the very moments I’m thinking about you, but I know you’re walking the other direction looking back at me with my own mesmerized stare.
If we talked, you’d say that you miss me, and I know it for certain you do, but what you don’t know is that — it is you that you’re missing — when you recall all my naughty and tortured soft ways. But you just can’t meet me there in the middle or accept a love that can heal.
And you know this is not the way to go about such things, but you’re always finding yourself walking the other direction with your face turned to look behind you, unable to break gaze with all that is so broken, yet dazzling.
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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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