2:46 p.m. - 2005-12-01
Realization Rant
And now, in that empty place I could never quite allow myself to experience, I felt remorse like a pebble in my shoe. Insistent and small. Relentless in its urgency. Every step became labored. I hobbled through my days like Jacob, bearing the constant reminder of my failure to heed the familiar voice that sought to guide me home. Time and again, I had melted the jewels only He could bestow, fashioning for myself a powerless idol. Anthony and all his golden predecessors. Worshipping their souless eyes, prostrating myself at their feet of clay. All to fill that vacuum which nature abhors. That God-shaped hole I struggled to cover with Revlon and the pretty lies of pretty men. Alone with myself, I remembered the one who had so sincerely offered himself these many painful years, envying the woman who had the good sense to recognize his value. Who didn't perch on the splintered fence of ambivalence. I fought the tendency to hate myself, finally understanding that doing so would only perpetuate the self-abuse, wrong turns and inability to receive what was true. I resolved to live the rest of my life differently. Somehow, I had misread the playlist. Become an understudy in my own life, cautiously studying my lines. Safe in the wings. Silently repeating each unspoken word behind thick velvet curtains. Anonymous. Unaccountable for the results. Always waiting to be seen. To shine. Snatching fragments of identity from the buckled mirrors of the narcissistic men I allowed to star in my story. Piecing swatches of their transitory approval and abandonment into a crazy quilt named "me". It was all so suddenly clear. I had recoiled from love for fear of exposure. Of finally playing my hand. Of letting myself be known, accepted and possibly rejected. Losing my courage in increments. Selling bits of myself for a discordant siren song. And now John was gone. Taken. Lost to me. Sacred tears burned hot within. Regret is a docile demon. Quietly persistent. An ache that, unrestrained, becomes a travelling companion. I wanted to be happy for John. I was happy for John. The poetic justice of it all was not lost on me. I was sowing what I had reaped. But, oh, such belated compassion arose for the girl who had made her choices with so little real conviction. The girl so ill prepared for the life she inadvertently courted. The girl who was, in many ways, unscathed by the mistakes that encrusted her like the borrowed shell of a hermit crab. The girl who finally realized she could love a loving man. More, the girl who realized she could love herself.
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