emerging

“Who is the man I see
Where I’m supposed to be
I lost my heart and buried it too deep
Under the Iron Sea

Oh crystal ball, crystal ball
Save us all
Tell me life is beautiful
Mirror, mirror on the wall

Lines ever more unclear
Not sure I’m even here
The more I look
The more I think that I’m
Starting to disappear

Oh crystal ball, crystal ball
Save us all
Tell me life is beautiful
Mirror, mirror on the wall

Oh crystal ball,
Hear my song, fading out
Everything I know is wrong
So put me where I belong

I don’t where I am
And I don’t really care
I look myself in the eye
There’s no one there

I fall upon the earth
I call upon the air
All I get is the same old vacant stare

Oh crystal ball, crystal ball
Save us all
Tell me life is beautiful
Mirror, mirror on the wall

Oh, crystal ball, hear my song
Fading out
Everything I know is wrong
So put me where I belong”

Song: “Crystal Ball”
Artist: Keane
Album: Under the Iron Sea, 2006

Today is milestone for me. One week exactly. One week since I broke down and wept. I didn’t think I would get here. Maybe it should have come sooner. Do most people grieve for a solid three months? Do they shrug their shoulders and simply say, “We’ll that didn’t work out, what next?” I hope not. I hope not everyone grieves for three months either. It ain’t fun. Even if some say that I have chosen to grieve and hurt to an extreme. Maybe that is true, maybe it is not. Neither negates the truth of the matter.
It is funny, maybe not funny Ha-Ha, but still funny. I was so afraid that I would lose myself in my last relationship (in an all-consuming way—like in my first) that I messed it up, not able to really show and give the love I felt. Even with all my walls up to protect myself, I lost myself—just in a different way. Not to another man like I had feared, but to pain. I would look in the mirror and not see Brandon anymore. I used to be happy in the very core of me; now, all I saw in my eyes was dull ache and desperation. I thought I had already worked through the things I didn’t understand and yet I was thrust under the waves of compounding unanswerable questions. Life was, once again, shaken to the very foundations of my stability. It scared me, thoroughly. More than ever before in my life, actually. I was not sure I was going to get to the other side and regain a semblance of sanity again.
I disappeared for awhile there. That Brandon is not back yet. He never will be. That is ok. A new Brandon is emerging. Breaking out of the chrysalis that has enclosed me for the past ninety days. I am new. Some good, some bad. I have a whole new set of baggage attached and some hurt that will rest in my being for the duration of my life. I also am stronger, a little wiser, and while I have a whole new set of guards up, I also am more willing to risk those being breached and let myself be open to the possibility of being truly loved and even truly hurt again. You see, I learned that if you protect yourself so much that you can not risk real love, you won’t get to experience love fully, but you will still get to experience the pain, fully. Pain comes if we choose it or not. Protect ourselves or not. Love is always a choice, always a risk.
Are the tears over? I doubt it. Is the constant state of desperate insanity over? I think so. Am I going to choose to risk love and being loved? Although it will undoubtedly be clumsy and awkward, yes, I am. There is a man I am familiar with, a man who has new aspects to him, a man who is scared and excited about who he is becoming that looks back into my eyes from the mirror now. Yes, there is still pain in those eyes. The sickeningly beautiful thing about pain. . . it is where joy, love, and hope blossom from.
“Tell me life is beautiful!”