Do People See The Real You?

Many years ago in the days before I became who I was and grew into who I am now a woman told me she couldn’t see taking a chance on me.

I remember listening to her list of reasons and shaking my head at her and walking away. She yelled something about not wanting to hurt me and I shook

She yelled something about not wanting to hurt me and I shook my head again.

“We can’t do this because I’ll break your heart.”

“No, we can’t do this because your heart is already broken and mine will never be yours.”

I remember walking away knowing that I had dodged a bullet there, not because she was a bad person but because she never would have gotten me.

She never would have seen the real me.

Do People See The Real You?

Sometimes I look at the past eleven or twelve years and think about how very different my life is and the direction I am heading in.

It used to scare me to look out into the dark and realize my ability to see the future was clouded. Used to worry me that I didn’t have the sort of clarity I wanted to make informed decisions and then I found out what happens when you hold onto what you have got for reasons like just because.

You miss out on opportunities to live the kind of life you could be living.  It is hard because you can’t ever know with complete certainty what that life would be like without living it, but if you are like me you regret choosing to watch that train leave the station.

Sometimes I think of myself as being like a classic car that has been locked inside a barn for so long no one remembers it can do more and be more than something that collects dust.

And unless someone recognizes that there is more there, unless someone sees the potential there that classic car just sits there serving as a model of mediocrity.

Except I am not a car and I am not intentionally collecting dust, it just feels like it sometimes.

Because when I ask do people see the real you what I am really trying to figure out is why more people don’t see the real me.

Or maybe I am saying I fear they see the real me and they reject it outright or fail to at least consider maybe there is some substance there.

Maybe it is part of why we write. Maybe we write because it is our chance to try to show the world or at least the few people who read our words who we are.

No one can interrupt you here. They can’t stop you mid-sentence to tell you about how they understand what you are saying while they take over the conversation and ignore you were just telling them something important.

Or maybe what we are really doing is holding a mirror in front of our faces and making sure we hear what our heart has been screaming for so many years.

Maybe this is where we finally stop to listen to what we are really saying and hear for the first time what our true desires are.

The Greatest Gift A Blogger Will Ever Receive

Maybe the chance to sit in perfect silence and do more than listen to the echoes of your heart is the greatest gifft a blogger will ever receive.

The chance to figure out with certainty the direction you want to walk in as and to stop just going with what you think makes sense.

Some people say they are most afraid of being completely open and vulnerable to someone else because they fear the pain that would come with rejection.

But I have begun to wonder if the root of that fear lies more in the second-guessing that comes after that rejection.

Truth is I am not really sure, I am just thinking out loud.

What I am certain of is the way I feel about the Neruda quote above and the knowledge that if you have never loved someone with the sort of fierce passion that comes with that you are missing out.

Again, this is just me, but I know with perfect certainty what it means to think of love as your air and how you can struggle to figure out how to breathe again when you think it has been removed.

But when you figure out how to see the real you there is a moment of clarity that comes with it, a realization that when you don’t look for reasons to love but do so just because the depth becomes immeasurable and feels limitless.

What I Fear Most

What I fear most isn’t the loss of such a love but the idea that I might forgo trying to live a life that feeds it because of fear.

What I fear most is allowing uncertainty to serve as rejection and refusal to take a chance to be the real me.

Because when I let go of that fear I give possibility the chance to turn into opportunity.

Sometimes I look at painters and sculptors and wonder if there is a way for me to borrow some of their skill. The ability to take stone and chisel away at it until it turns into something beautiful is amazing to me.

The way you can lay paint and brush upon a blank canvas and create something out of nothing is magical.

A good gardener is like that painter or sculptor too. They look at patches of dirt and understand that if they tend to their garden they can grow something beautiful there.

It may be dirt today but with some patience and some love you can turn weeds into flowers.