I take it back, I don’t want to be the light. For longer than I care to admit I’ve felt like a fluorescent beacon visible only to ‘almost ready’ contenders. Beckoning them to dry land and a safe place to rest, but not stay. I have that about me, the tendency to show people who they are, what they could be, daring them to dream big and to live without the shame disguised as humility we’ve been taught to unconsciously wield like armor against our purpose.
Healing as I go, so damn patient and so damn good at justifying everything away. My existence seemingly a mirror born to show the cracks in others. It hurts to think about too long, how hard it is for me to exist knowing that the unconditional acceptance and healthy heart the next person gets — comes only after thawing out the frost from the past under the warmth of my understanding. It sounds silly to say out loud but I don’t want to be the one who loosens the lid but doesn’t get to open the jar, again.
I hate seeing it all if I’m being honest, seeing potential and guiding others toward what waits on the other side. Guiding realizations found beneath the unturned stones their subconscious hid long before I came along. I nurse the oozing wounds that went untouched for years that I, myself didn’t create. Oh how, how, how do I stop shining light on the cracks and instead learn to step over them?
Is that selfish? If I can help; why wouldn’t I? If I can help good men be great men, or at very least give the perpetually bad men pause before following through… Why wouldn’t I? I sometimes worry that’s all there is for me in this lifetime, to merely be a vessel disguised as a woman meant to light the way for broken men to reach their highest good.
The perpetual personality hire, the multi-hyphenated ever so talented and altruistic doormat. An occasionally lonely, rarely satiated stoic left behind once healing is done. A heart left proud but reeling, rebuilding walls as I tell myself that they must think of me when the scars tingle from a trigger I’d stitched. They wonder how I’m doing now, where I’m headed now, who I’m putting back together. I like to kid myself into thinking they still wonder what I’m creating and through which medium. My internalized truth is that the memory of me is more likely found at the bottom of a shower drain or tissue.
The phoenix girl, setting herself on fire to keep the hope of love warm. I dream sometimes, I wonder what a child’s eyes might have looked like, if they’d have the same twinkle, if they would have his smile with my laugh, his temper or my creativity — both maybe? None really. Nostalgic dreams and thought spirals of the haunting almosts I went to the trenches for. I hope some lessons they lived through me will reach their next generation to some capacity, that their offspring will have a mentally present father, a curious teacher and student to guide them with acceptance and love.
They won’t remember that. It never occurred to them that to heal them; was to shatter myself. A role I willingly took — time and time again thinking it would be different, like somehow the mirror that showed them the wounds would stop reflecting the scars once the healing was done.“I know, I know, I know that breakthroughs take time — Here, take mine. Keep my thoughts as they resonate, I know some shortcuts — I’ll man the reins this round, you’ll be able to carry us through the next.” They don’t remember that, they just know that although they couldn’t keep our promise, that after me — something shifted. Off they go searching for that closest thing to that heaven on earth feeling, they can’t do without it now. Just without the reflection, please. Cab light on. Lucky, lucky girls.
The aftermath is same as ever, me making lessons out of losses and watching as they stand at an altar riddled with promises I showed how to make and keep. I hate that I understand why, I hate knowing I’m that person to every man I’ve loved and lost. I’m so tired of losing — I want to be triumphant in love and to bask in the afterglow of a battle I can claim as my own rather than becoming a stepping stone in another story. Actually, I don’t want battle. I’ve earned my own slice of heaven in this lifetime. I want to laugh until I cry and someone to turn my cries into laughs when the going gets tough or the world starts to get heavy. I want to be chosen instead of being the one who paves the way for the one. Just one — I want to keep one person, my person. Just this once.
I’ve sure as hell earned more than another almost.
