My Thoughts
The things I think but do not say
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Let's keep it simple and just call this part of my site my journal.
Reflection
This morning I saw the most beautiful face in the world. My eyes fell upon the slightly pink sun kissed cheeks and I realized there was something very familiar about the face I was looking upon. It was as though I was seeing my best friend for the first time in my life and knowing that this was a life I would never fear would leave my own. Her blue eyes twinkled with the same recognition that shown within my own. Her blonde hair fell across those eyes. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and smiled out at me with a slight giggle that made me giggle as my fingers danced across my own brow.
There was something about this woman that captured my internal curiosity. The kind of curiosity I would never speak out about to those around me only because words would fail me terribly in trying to explain it. We didn’t speak a word. Instead, we just let our eyes dance around our facial features. She seemed to inspect every little detail about my face trying to see beyond the surface just as I was trying to do the same with her. I was suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of familiar sadness as I looked into the bluest eyes I had ever seen in my life. The longer I looked into them without blinking the more I longed for her to speak. As she looked back at me I saw her face seem to fall and a shadow passed over her eyes. I saw the corners of her eyes become wet with emotion and I felt my throat tighten. Seeing tears form in a woman’s eyes was a huge weakness with me. Because I felt so close and yet so far from this woman before me I realized that I felt as though I was suffocating as I watched her carefully in silence. My face burned and my mind buzzed and I wanted so badly to find out what in the world could make such beautiful eyes glitter with sad tears. I thought, then, about something someone had once said about myself.
“You are cute when you pout and beautiful when you cry.”
The nameless woman before me glanced away just as I glanced away at this thought. We looked up at each other and just as I thought my heart would stop beating with the grief that was flooding over me as I watched her fight her tears, I began to smile. She smiled right back at me. We both laughed and wiped our eyes.
My eyes lost focus and blurred as they would when I would look beyond what was right in front of me. It was as though I was trying too hard to look at one of those Magic Eye pictures that I used to see in the mall. I strained to find some sort of detail within the swirled colors that my vision failed to focus on. Suddenly my vision cleared and the face that jumped out at me startled me into nervous giggles. I looked back into the bluest eyes I had ever seen.
I reached out towards the blonde as she reached out towards me. I watched as our fingertips touched. I jumped as I felt my fingertips felt the cool hardness of glass. I followed the blonde’s fingertips up her arm, past her shoulder, and to her face.
I smiled into my reflection as I felt my past, present, and future collide into the one image that sat before me in the mirror. I wiped my eyes, turned off the light, and walked out of my bedroom.
It isn’t very often I see that same beautiful woman, but every once in a while she appears and never fails to strike the deepest chord of emotion within me. That woman looks at me and sees the things that I fail to see about myself. She believes in the things I fail to believe in. She loves me in all the ways I can never seem to love myself. She shows herself within the darkest moments of my life when I seem to be blinded by the insecurities within me. When she shows her face, I somehow manage to face the fear, but not be scared. I long to see this woman again.
Even more so, I long for the day when that woman that brings me strength and shows me who I really am becomes my everyday reflection. When will my reflection show whom I am inside?
Morning Laughter
So the world stopped spinning today, and for a moment I breathed deeply. The ability to close my eyes and not fear what I will see when they open was a moment of complete bliss. The youth within me smiled so widely that my aged face smiled as well and seemed to lose a few lines painted by the years. I find solitude between the sheets, with my eyes closed, my mind open, and the world asleep. I dream that I can fly, and that I have the ability to save the world. I open my eyes and for a fleeting moment I feel the strength to get up and move with such grace that the world slows and gapes at me in complete awe. Then the sleepy thoughts clear, my vision is focused, and my heart aches once more to grasp onto the world I just lost. My amazement in a daze is blinked away as my eyes adjust to the broken morning light coming through the blinds. I stare up at the ceiling and I let my mind linger within the dreams that still seem to hang over me. They seem to falter for a moment, come in to focus once more, and then vanish like a breath in the wind. For a fleeting moment the happiness that found me within that dream lingers within my heart and then sadness overwhelms me as the reality the world beginning to move again sets in. I let out a sigh and suck the air back into my lungs before it has left me completely. And then the world began to spin again.
Laughter rings in my ears and I can’t help but smile. It never ceases to amaze me what the gentle giggle of youth can do to my aching soul. The sound takes me back to my own youth and I try so hard to remember what it felt like to truly laugh. When my own world was lived in one moment at a time instead of in the past or worrying about the future. It’s amazing how slow time seemed to move when I was young. Living from one moment to the next keeps life from flying by too quickly. I didn’t even realize the miracle of being able to savor a moment before it passed on to another moment. I would give anything to be able to live like that again. Everything I truly needed to know about life I learned before my girlish giggle left me, before I became the woman that I am today. And, yet, those lessons I learned so long ago seem so beyond my wise knowledge of life that I have today. If only I could grasp on to those memories and playful lessons, then maybe my world would seem to be manageable.
I turn my face towards the sound of youthful laughter and my eyes smile at the innocent beauty before me. So many mornings in the past I have turned my face towards this wonderful sound to be greeted by the same wonderful face. It’s a face that reminds me that it’s the little things in life that matter, and that in the huge scheme of things none of what I worry about truly matters. It’s this laughter and this smile that allows me to giggle as I haven’t giggled in more than two decades. Even in the earliest of morning hours, it is a feeling that I welcome with proverbial open arms.
One day I hope to tell her what just her simple youthful existence in my life has done for my heart and soul. In the moments when all seems lost, it’s a face like hers that allows me to let go and just ‘be’ while around her.
I am consistently amazed by the things she says and does, and am always learning to stifle laughter at the most inopportune times. I can’t remember the last time I laughed myself so silly that my insides ached and my cheeks hurt. I cannot remember the last time I cried because of laughter. And, yet, time and time again I am brought to my knees with the love and laughter of innocent youth. I can only imagine how intensified my emotional world would be if the face of this laughter was my own flesh and blood. I can only dream of that day. To dream is to stop the world from spinning and to breathe deeply. Here we go again.
