Last Updated On April 7, 2014
I'm a dreamer. I always have been. There are some dreams that I can't...won't give up. A dream where its always sparkly and warm. Where there is always an intellectual exchange. An understanding, a hidden language only the two of us know. A familiarity, that has becomes as necessary as air. These things are not sustainable. But they are the things my dreams consist of.
Mirrors
I knew you in a past life. I’m sure of it. I’ve never been more certain of anything before. It would take at least three lifetimes of practice to be able to move in such harmony with anyone. It’s bizarre and beautiful how sentences end together, thoughts are never misunderstood and sentiment is implied with gracious perception. I have learned through our connection to appreciate humanity in a way I never expected. The interactions of humans are a living force. Breath being pulled in from all of those around you, filling your body from nose to toes. Understanding emerges from our interactions, all of us moving together; like ants with a common goal. Our emotional well being fed by those few people that cross your path and look at you, all of you, and understand. They feel your hurt and your happy equally. They see you. In a way that stills the clamor inside your body; that constant internal toil; that reaching on your tiptoes at the universe for a break in the fog. That person is you. Your eyes are so familiar. Filled with warm understanding. When I see your face I feel a break in the fog. Like the sun burning through in the early morning, piercing the density and pushing aside the haze. For the briefest of moments I feel connected. Your laughter is a bridge spanning the darkness between myself and my fellow human being. Suddenly I feel it all slipping, the edges becoming unraveled and as quick as you appeared you’re gone and I am plunged back into the darkness of my own psyche. The person standing next to me again becomes a stranger. I look at you hesitantly. Assessing you based on my newly limited knowledge. You no longer seem to understand. The knowing look has left your eyes. Now there is no one who stands with me in the darkness. I thought you did. But you don’t. I created a you that is not you. I was seen for a moment by one person…I thought. I ponder and pace. How did I feel so held; so protected and supported by someone? Yet that person has slipped away. Were you real? Or were you an apparition? It’s as if I wandered into the wardrobe and everything worked. With you the colors are brighter, the adventures wilder and the future possible and waiting. I stepped out and reality came flooding back as a full frontal assault. Now I feel like I will never have that connection again. Like I am destined to be filled with longing and regret. I go over our interactions as if they were crime scenes. What I said, what you said, where we were, how we felt, when we felt it…and then I stop. Now that the wardrobe is closed I’m forced to look at the worn door. I open it and all I see in the back behind the musty dresses on the splintered rack is my own image. Staring back at me in the mirror. That magical interaction, that connection, you were just a sounding board, a mirror for me to look at, so it felt like there was another human being in my interactions. But It was myself that I had begun to love, to lust after even. It’s me that allowed myself to yearn and dream. Could it have just been me? What if my ability to be seen by another human being was because the perfect circumstances were placed at my feet and I was brave enough to leap? You held the mirror, and for that I am thankful. But in truth your role ends there. I have been in pursuit of the perfect person for so long, the perfect relief from the hard lonely feeling, that I created that perfect person; in you somehow, all the while looking at me. You are me and I am you, and that sad woman in the mirror is stronger and smarter than she ever imagined. Perhaps instead of searching for someone to carry the burden of who I am I should let go of some of the things that are my heaviest weights.
© Aryeal Jackson
32
A piece inspired by magic.
32
Truth. This week I will have completed 32 years. At approximately 8 something at night my mother, ignoring the flintstones on tv in the hospital, in fear of being cut open, alone, terrified and exhausted gave me my first of many sound talkings, to. She didn’t want surgery, she just wanted me to cooperated and come out. So with a renewed sense of determination and a less than obedient child, she pushed me out. My grandmother was in the waiting room. My father was somewhere, but not there. And there I was, small and feisty from the start.
This week I am 32. Wife of one, mother of two. Prone to using too many commas and loosing my temper. I am a roundish shape with curves, lots of them. I look tired and worn. My hair has bits of grey and an indeterminable amount of soil in it. But who am I? Simply a collection of my struggles and triumphs?
I hit rock bottom a few times in the last year. Sometimes once a week, sometimes once a day. I wanted to be anywhere other than where I was. I wanted to be anything other than who I was. I had failed at my journey. I wasn’t who I thought I ought to be. I didnt want to be me anymore. Until I did.
I suffer from too big a heart and too over imaginative a mind. I hope and dream until it eats me up. I plan and fail until I can’t breathe. And I conveniently never notice when I succeed. I am my biggest critic, and most loyal fan. I grew out of an overly confident and exceptionally akward teen; with a tumultuous, then dull adolescence.
I often drive too fast, blast music too loud, and sing off key…on purpose. I will hug you when you least expect it because people don’t hug enough. We don’t touch each other enough. We don’t share our true feeling or talk about sex enough. As women we don’t cherish each other without a motive, and thats wrong. I don’t celebrate myself as often as I should. I am strong, damnit! I can make chaos into clarity in the time it takes others to pee. I can talk you out of the shirt on your back and you’ll thank me for it. I sound smart because I can bullshit like a pro. Also, I’m brilliant. I can anticipate what you want before you know you need it, and then make you rely on that. How else will I gage my usefulness if I’m not needed; I’m a woman. I will love you with a ferocity that scares all but the most brave.
I am my journey. I am my struggle. I am my mothers daughter. I have learned that strength looks like sitting down. I accept that fear is strength and asking for a hand to pull you up is beautiful. I’ve learned to listen. No. Really listen. I am working on not asking the same question ten times because I don’t like your answer. I want to love you for what you are, not what I want you to be. Im working on restraint. I’m working on loving me before you. I want to stop to feel the sun on my face; not because I should and its poetic, but because I like it.
Truth. I am who I am. No more and absolutely no less. I’m 32 years old. And I’m not done.
Communication
“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always in all circumstances we are by ourselves…By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude…a society of island universes.” -Aldous Huxley
What does it mean to truly communicate? Do we ever truly understand what a person MEANS??
I used to explain communication in terms of Huxley. Aldous Huxley wrote that we are all island universes, wildly gesticulating in a vain attempt to make others understand us. I used the example of pain, like Huxley did, to try and get my sleepy and uninterested students to imagine the reality of our language barrier. I’d say, ” imagine you just fell down the stairs, and you’re mostly ok, but your butt is killing you!! And the first thing you do is try to explain this to a friend. You tell him how you fell, at what angle you hit the stairs and just how much your butt hurts. And all the while your buddy shakes his head in agreement. Like, yeah man I totally get it. That sucks!
However that dude in agreement doesn’t truly understand just how and where your hindquarters are aching. Because no matter how well you explain it, he will never be in your body. He doesn’t have your legs, arms, or butt. He is different. Seperate. And while technically all the parts are the same; they don’t register pain in the exact same way. So he will never truly understand your pain.” And my students would look up at me. Mind. Blown. I would get nods. And a murmur of “yeah”. Because it would click, we are all the same. But how we process, get, understand, and perceive things are all so vastly different.
Human beings have tried to make themselves understood since we could draw on cave walls. The very foundation of human desire is to be seen. As a whole person. Mind, Body, and Soul. Wars have been fought over misunderstandings and manipulations of communication. Good grief, anyone with a toddler knows that one wrong word can be the difference between peace and all out chaos!! So why haven’t we mastered communication? Can’t be sure. All we know is there is an overwhelming, intrinsic desire to keep trying. To find just one person who truly sees us for who we are and accept us fully. Because then, we will have truly communicated.
Huxley, Aldous, The Doors of Perception (New York: Harper, 1954), 12.
___________________________________________________________________
Depersonalization
I didn’t know you still cried.
I didn’t know you were in distress.
You saw me get up and leave. It was all too much.
I picked what strength I had, and held it up like a shield, a fortress. I ran. I have always been running.
Why didn’t you run with me?
Why did you leave me there and not look back?
Why did you leave me with the anger and the fear?
You abandoned me there, under that table, in that place.
Now you are stalked by abandonment. You feel it every where.
I abandoned you?
I abandoned you!
I left you in that house, hiding under that table. I remember you, sucking your thumb, just out of reach. You were safest there.
I had to run, I ran from the car and didn’t look back. I didn’t look back and see your tear stained face pressed against the glass. Small, alone, abandoned.
But I couldn’t take you, I couldn’t hold the pain, the fear, I couldn’t carry us both, it was too much. 
That was the last time I failed, until now.
All those years. I was too afraid to look back. I carried your distress. Constantly, just below the surface, never allowing me peace, never allowing the childlike part of me to live. 
But now I see. It was because you’re still there, Hiding in the shadow, under the table, waiting.
I’m here, I came back.
I have you now, you’re not alone anymore. We are together again. You are me and I am you; we are safe.
We are one again, dry your tears, and we will go together. <a
Safe? 
Yes, the danger is gone, the shadows won’t bring us pain anymore. But our wounds need time.
Put your hand in mine, they are one, and never let go
Find out more about Aryeal here: http://www.illuminousflux.com/?page_id=76
Last Updated On April 7, 2014
I'm a dreamer. I always have been. There are some dreams that I can't...won't give up. A dream where its always sparkly and warm. Where there is always an intellectual exchange. An understanding, a hidden language only the two of us know. A familiarity, that has becomes as necessary as air. These things are not sustainable. But they are the things my dreams consist of.
Mirrors
I knew you in a past life. I’m sure of it. I’ve never been more certain of anything before. It would take at least three lifetimes of practice to be able to move in such harmony with anyone. It’s bizarre and beautiful how sentences end together, thoughts are never misunderstood and sentiment is implied with gracious perception. I have learned through our connection to appreciate humanity in a way I never expected. The interactions of humans are a living force. Breath being pulled in from all of those around you, filling your body from nose to toes. Understanding emerges from our interactions, all of us moving together; like ants with a common goal. Our emotional well being fed by those few people that cross your path and look at you, all of you, and understand. They feel your hurt and your happy equally. They see you. In a way that stills the clamor inside your body; that constant internal toil; that reaching on your tiptoes at the universe for a break in the fog. That person is you. Your eyes are so familiar. Filled with warm understanding. When I see your face I feel a break in the fog. Like the sun burning through in the early morning, piercing the density and pushing aside the haze. For the briefest of moments I feel connected. Your laughter is a bridge spanning the darkness between myself and my fellow human being. Suddenly I feel it all slipping, the edges becoming unraveled and as quick as you appeared you’re gone and I am plunged back into the darkness of my own psyche. The person standing next to me again becomes a stranger. I look at you hesitantly. Assessing you based on my newly limited knowledge. You no longer seem to understand. The knowing look has left your eyes. Now there is no one who stands with me in the darkness. I thought you did. But you don’t. I created a you that is not you. I was seen for a moment by one person…I thought. I ponder and pace. How did I feel so held; so protected and supported by someone? Yet that person has slipped away. Were you real? Or were you an apparition? It’s as if I wandered into the wardrobe and everything worked. With you the colors are brighter, the adventures wilder and the future possible and waiting. I stepped out and reality came flooding back as a full frontal assault. Now I feel like I will never have that connection again. Like I am destined to be filled with longing and regret. I go over our interactions as if they were crime scenes. What I said, what you said, where we were, how we felt, when we felt it…and then I stop. Now that the wardrobe is closed I’m forced to look at the worn door. I open it and all I see in the back behind the musty dresses on the splintered rack is my own image. Staring back at me in the mirror. That magical interaction, that connection, you were just a sounding board, a mirror for me to look at, so it felt like there was another human being in my interactions. But It was myself that I had begun to love, to lust after even. It’s me that allowed myself to yearn and dream. Could it have just been me? What if my ability to be seen by another human being was because the perfect circumstances were placed at my feet and I was brave enough to leap? You held the mirror, and for that I am thankful. But in truth your role ends there. I have been in pursuit of the perfect person for so long, the perfect relief from the hard lonely feeling, that I created that perfect person; in you somehow, all the while looking at me. You are me and I am you, and that sad woman in the mirror is stronger and smarter than she ever imagined. Perhaps instead of searching for someone to carry the burden of who I am I should let go of some of the things that are my heaviest weights.
© Aryeal Jackson
32
A piece inspired by magic.
32
Truth. This week I will have completed 32 years. At approximately 8 something at night my mother, ignoring the flintstones on tv in the hospital, in fear of being cut open, alone, terrified and exhausted gave me my first of many sound talkings, to. She didn’t want surgery, she just wanted me to cooperated and come out. So with a renewed sense of determination and a less than obedient child, she pushed me out. My grandmother was in the waiting room. My father was somewhere, but not there. And there I was, small and feisty from the start.
This week I am 32. Wife of one, mother of two. Prone to using too many commas and loosing my temper. I am a roundish shape with curves, lots of them. I look tired and worn. My hair has bits of grey and an indeterminable amount of soil in it. But who am I? Simply a collection of my struggles and triumphs?
I hit rock bottom a few times in the last year. Sometimes once a week, sometimes once a day. I wanted to be anywhere other than where I was. I wanted to be anything other than who I was. I had failed at my journey. I wasn’t who I thought I ought to be. I didnt want to be me anymore. Until I did.
I suffer from too big a heart and too over imaginative a mind. I hope and dream until it eats me up. I plan and fail until I can’t breathe. And I conveniently never notice when I succeed. I am my biggest critic, and most loyal fan. I grew out of an overly confident and exceptionally akward teen; with a tumultuous, then dull adolescence.
I often drive too fast, blast music too loud, and sing off key…on purpose. I will hug you when you least expect it because people don’t hug enough. We don’t touch each other enough. We don’t share our true feeling or talk about sex enough. As women we don’t cherish each other without a motive, and thats wrong. I don’t celebrate myself as often as I should. I am strong, damnit! I can make chaos into clarity in the time it takes others to pee. I can talk you out of the shirt on your back and you’ll thank me for it. I sound smart because I can bullshit like a pro. Also, I’m brilliant. I can anticipate what you want before you know you need it, and then make you rely on that. How else will I gage my usefulness if I’m not needed; I’m a woman. I will love you with a ferocity that scares all but the most brave.
I am my journey. I am my struggle. I am my mothers daughter. I have learned that strength looks like sitting down. I accept that fear is strength and asking for a hand to pull you up is beautiful. I’ve learned to listen. No. Really listen. I am working on not asking the same question ten times because I don’t like your answer. I want to love you for what you are, not what I want you to be. Im working on restraint. I’m working on loving me before you. I want to stop to feel the sun on my face; not because I should and its poetic, but because I like it.
Truth. I am who I am. No more and absolutely no less. I’m 32 years old. And I’m not done.
Communication
“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always in all circumstances we are by ourselves…By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude…a society of island universes.” -Aldous Huxley
What does it mean to truly communicate? Do we ever truly understand what a person MEANS??
I used to explain communication in terms of Huxley. Aldous Huxley wrote that we are all island universes, wildly gesticulating in a vain attempt to make others understand us. I used the example of pain, like Huxley did, to try and get my sleepy and uninterested students to imagine the reality of our language barrier. I’d say, ” imagine you just fell down the stairs, and you’re mostly ok, but your butt is killing you!! And the first thing you do is try to explain this to a friend. You tell him how you fell, at what angle you hit the stairs and just how much your butt hurts. And all the while your buddy shakes his head in agreement. Like, yeah man I totally get it. That sucks!
However that dude in agreement doesn’t truly understand just how and where your hindquarters are aching. Because no matter how well you explain it, he will never be in your body. He doesn’t have your legs, arms, or butt. He is different. Seperate. And while technically all the parts are the same; they don’t register pain in the exact same way. So he will never truly understand your pain.” And my students would look up at me. Mind. Blown. I would get nods. And a murmur of “yeah”. Because it would click, we are all the same. But how we process, get, understand, and perceive things are all so vastly different.
Human beings have tried to make themselves understood since we could draw on cave walls. The very foundation of human desire is to be seen. As a whole person. Mind, Body, and Soul. Wars have been fought over misunderstandings and manipulations of communication. Good grief, anyone with a toddler knows that one wrong word can be the difference between peace and all out chaos!! So why haven’t we mastered communication? Can’t be sure. All we know is there is an overwhelming, intrinsic desire to keep trying. To find just one person who truly sees us for who we are and accept us fully. Because then, we will have truly communicated.
Huxley, Aldous, The Doors of Perception (New York: Harper, 1954), 12.
___________________________________________________________________
Depersonalization
I didn’t know you still cried.
I didn’t know you were in distress.
You saw me get up and leave. It was all too much.
I picked what strength I had, and held it up like a shield, a fortress. I ran. I have always been running.
Why didn’t you run with me?
Why did you leave me there and not look back?
Why did you leave me with the anger and the fear?
You abandoned me there, under that table, in that place.
Now you are stalked by abandonment. You feel it every where.
I abandoned you?
I abandoned you!
I left you in that house, hiding under that table. I remember you, sucking your thumb, just out of reach. You were safest there.
I had to run, I ran from the car and didn’t look back. I didn’t look back and see your tear stained face pressed against the glass. Small, alone, abandoned.
But I couldn’t take you, I couldn’t hold the pain, the fear, I couldn’t carry us both, it was too much.
That was the last time I failed, until now.
All those years. I was too afraid to look back. I carried your distress. Constantly, just below the surface, never allowing me peace, never allowing the childlike part of me to live.
But now I see. It was because you’re still there, Hiding in the shadow, under the table, waiting.
I’m here, I came back.
I have you now, you’re not alone anymore. We are together again. You are me and I am you; we are safe.
We are one again, dry your tears, and we will go together. <a
Safe?
Yes, the danger is gone, the shadows won’t bring us pain anymore. But our wounds need time.
Put your hand in mine, they are one, and never let go
Find out more about Aryeal here: http://www.illuminousflux.com/?page_id=76
Last Updated On April 7, 2014
I'm a dreamer. I always have been. There are some dreams that I can't...won't give up. A dream where its always sparkly and warm. Where there is always an intellectual exchange. An understanding, a hidden language only the two of us know. A familiarity, that has becomes as necessary as air. These things are not sustainable. But they are the things my dreams consist of.
Mirrors
I knew you in a past life. I’m sure of it. I’ve never been more certain of anything before. It would take at least three lifetimes of practice to be able to move in such harmony with anyone. It’s bizarre and beautiful how sentences end together, thoughts are never misunderstood and sentiment is implied with gracious perception. I have learned through our connection to appreciate humanity in a way I never expected. The interactions of humans are a living force. Breath being pulled in from all of those around you, filling your body from nose to toes. Understanding emerges from our interactions, all of us moving together; like ants with a common goal. Our emotional well being fed by those few people that cross your path and look at you, all of you, and understand. They feel your hurt and your happy equally. They see you. In a way that stills the clamor inside your body; that constant internal toil; that reaching on your tiptoes at the universe for a break in the fog. That person is you. Your eyes are so familiar. Filled with warm understanding. When I see your face I feel a break in the fog. Like the sun burning through in the early morning, piercing the density and pushing aside the haze. For the briefest of moments I feel connected. Your laughter is a bridge spanning the darkness between myself and my fellow human being. Suddenly I feel it all slipping, the edges becoming unraveled and as quick as you appeared you’re gone and I am plunged back into the darkness of my own psyche. The person standing next to me again becomes a stranger. I look at you hesitantly. Assessing you based on my newly limited knowledge. You no longer seem to understand. The knowing look has left your eyes. Now there is no one who stands with me in the darkness. I thought you did. But you don’t. I created a you that is not you. I was seen for a moment by one person…I thought. I ponder and pace. How did I feel so held; so protected and supported by someone? Yet that person has slipped away. Were you real? Or were you an apparition? It’s as if I wandered into the wardrobe and everything worked. With you the colors are brighter, the adventures wilder and the future possible and waiting. I stepped out and reality came flooding back as a full frontal assault. Now I feel like I will never have that connection again. Like I am destined to be filled with longing and regret. I go over our interactions as if they were crime scenes. What I said, what you said, where we were, how we felt, when we felt it…and then I stop. Now that the wardrobe is closed I’m forced to look at the worn door. I open it and all I see in the back behind the musty dresses on the splintered rack is my own image. Staring back at me in the mirror. That magical interaction, that connection, you were just a sounding board, a mirror for me to look at, so it felt like there was another human being in my interactions. But It was myself that I had begun to love, to lust after even. It’s me that allowed myself to yearn and dream. Could it have just been me? What if my ability to be seen by another human being was because the perfect circumstances were placed at my feet and I was brave enough to leap? You held the mirror, and for that I am thankful. But in truth your role ends there. I have been in pursuit of the perfect person for so long, the perfect relief from the hard lonely feeling, that I created that perfect person; in you somehow, all the while looking at me. You are me and I am you, and that sad woman in the mirror is stronger and smarter than she ever imagined. Perhaps instead of searching for someone to carry the burden of who I am I should let go of some of the things that are my heaviest weights.
© Aryeal Jackson
32
A piece inspired by magic.
32
Truth. This week I will have completed 32 years. At approximately 8 something at night my mother, ignoring the flintstones on tv in the hospital, in fear of being cut open, alone, terrified and exhausted gave me my first of many sound talkings, to. She didn’t want surgery, she just wanted me to cooperated and come out. So with a renewed sense of determination and a less than obedient child, she pushed me out. My grandmother was in the waiting room. My father was somewhere, but not there. And there I was, small and feisty from the start.
This week I am 32. Wife of one, mother of two. Prone to using too many commas and loosing my temper. I am a roundish shape with curves, lots of them. I look tired and worn. My hair has bits of grey and an indeterminable amount of soil in it. But who am I? Simply a collection of my struggles and triumphs?
I hit rock bottom a few times in the last year. Sometimes once a week, sometimes once a day. I wanted to be anywhere other than where I was. I wanted to be anything other than who I was. I had failed at my journey. I wasn’t who I thought I ought to be. I didnt want to be me anymore. Until I did.
I suffer from too big a heart and too over imaginative a mind. I hope and dream until it eats me up. I plan and fail until I can’t breathe. And I conveniently never notice when I succeed. I am my biggest critic, and most loyal fan. I grew out of an overly confident and exceptionally akward teen; with a tumultuous, then dull adolescence.
I often drive too fast, blast music too loud, and sing off key…on purpose. I will hug you when you least expect it because people don’t hug enough. We don’t touch each other enough. We don’t share our true feeling or talk about sex enough. As women we don’t cherish each other without a motive, and thats wrong. I don’t celebrate myself as often as I should. I am strong, damnit! I can make chaos into clarity in the time it takes others to pee. I can talk you out of the shirt on your back and you’ll thank me for it. I sound smart because I can bullshit like a pro. Also, I’m brilliant. I can anticipate what you want before you know you need it, and then make you rely on that. How else will I gage my usefulness if I’m not needed; I’m a woman. I will love you with a ferocity that scares all but the most brave.
I am my journey. I am my struggle. I am my mothers daughter. I have learned that strength looks like sitting down. I accept that fear is strength and asking for a hand to pull you up is beautiful. I’ve learned to listen. No. Really listen. I am working on not asking the same question ten times because I don’t like your answer. I want to love you for what you are, not what I want you to be. Im working on restraint. I’m working on loving me before you. I want to stop to feel the sun on my face; not because I should and its poetic, but because I like it.
Truth. I am who I am. No more and absolutely no less. I’m 32 years old. And I’m not done.
Communication
“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always in all circumstances we are by ourselves…By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude…a society of island universes.” -Aldous Huxley
What does it mean to truly communicate? Do we ever truly understand what a person MEANS??
I used to explain communication in terms of Huxley. Aldous Huxley wrote that we are all island universes, wildly gesticulating in a vain attempt to make others understand us. I used the example of pain, like Huxley did, to try and get my sleepy and uninterested students to imagine the reality of our language barrier. I’d say, ” imagine you just fell down the stairs, and you’re mostly ok, but your butt is killing you!! And the first thing you do is try to explain this to a friend. You tell him how you fell, at what angle you hit the stairs and just how much your butt hurts. And all the while your buddy shakes his head in agreement. Like, yeah man I totally get it. That sucks!
However that dude in agreement doesn’t truly understand just how and where your hindquarters are aching. Because no matter how well you explain it, he will never be in your body. He doesn’t have your legs, arms, or butt. He is different. Seperate. And while technically all the parts are the same; they don’t register pain in the exact same way. So he will never truly understand your pain.” And my students would look up at me. Mind. Blown. I would get nods. And a murmur of “yeah”. Because it would click, we are all the same. But how we process, get, understand, and perceive things are all so vastly different.
Human beings have tried to make themselves understood since we could draw on cave walls. The very foundation of human desire is to be seen. As a whole person. Mind, Body, and Soul. Wars have been fought over misunderstandings and manipulations of communication. Good grief, anyone with a toddler knows that one wrong word can be the difference between peace and all out chaos!! So why haven’t we mastered communication? Can’t be sure. All we know is there is an overwhelming, intrinsic desire to keep trying. To find just one person who truly sees us for who we are and accept us fully. Because then, we will have truly communicated.
Huxley, Aldous, The Doors of Perception (New York: Harper, 1954), 12.
___________________________________________________________________
Depersonalization
I didn’t know you still cried.
I didn’t know you were in distress.
You saw me get up and leave. It was all too much.
I picked what strength I had, and held it up like a shield, a fortress. I ran. I have always been running.
Why didn’t you run with me?
Why did you leave me there and not look back?
Why did you leave me with the anger and the fear?
You abandoned me there, under that table, in that place.
Now you are stalked by abandonment. You feel it every where.
I abandoned you?
I abandoned you!
I left you in that house, hiding under that table. I remember you, sucking your thumb, just out of reach. You were safest there.
I had to run, I ran from the car and didn’t look back. I didn’t look back and see your tear stained face pressed against the glass. Small, alone, abandoned.
But I couldn’t take you, I couldn’t hold the pain, the fear, I couldn’t carry us both, it was too much.
That was the last time I failed, until now.
All those years. I was too afraid to look back. I carried your distress. Constantly, just below the surface, never allowing me peace, never allowing the childlike part of me to live.
But now I see. It was because you’re still there, Hiding in the shadow, under the table, waiting.
I’m here, I came back.
I have you now, you’re not alone anymore. We are together again. You are me and I am you; we are safe.
We are one again, dry your tears, and we will go together. <a
Safe?
Yes, the danger is gone, the shadows won’t bring us pain anymore. But our wounds need time.
Put your hand in mine, they are one, and never let go
Find out more about Aryeal here: http://www.illuminousflux.com/?page_id=76