And I wonder, what made me so afraid? There's a part of me that yearns for the connection, the community. But that nagging whisper in my head repeats that phrase I used to hate so passionately - "Guard your heart." From the pains of the world, the pains of other people, the pains self-inflicted and unforeseen. But I wanted, and I want, to experience fully, with trust, with abandon. I want to admire the flowers and not think about them wilting, to bathe in daylight and not think about dusk. I hated to think about living life guarded, like some treasure others had to pay to see, to break in to experience. But whatever happened to my lack of inhibition that raised this glass case? One as clear as a calm lake on a calm day, easily shattered with the lightest of touches.
My heart is so full of other people's experiences but it scares me to think theirs might be full of mine. My brokenness and my breaking. I want to be the wind that bends, but never the gust that breaks. A tousle of the hair, a welcome ray of sun on a cold day, a dancing leaf in the golden glow of an afternoon. Fleeting and forgotten, gone with the whisper of time. A gentleness, a tenderness, so deeply at odds with the force I tend to be and how much, how too much, I am. Perhaps the panes are to protect others from the pain of me.
It's so hard to verbalize these feelings, but perhaps that's what makes us human. Just feeling, and knowing that others do too.
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