I think about this often. I lend myself to contemplation. I reflect on things that have happened to me throughout my life; either by my own doing, or at the hands of the universe, or a force I don’t give much thought to.
Things happen.
All the time.
They shape who we are.
As individuals, we all sit at a metaphorical potter’s wheel from the beginning. Our clay is soft and wet to the touch, and it spills in endless motion. It forms new shapes constantly; versions of ourselves that, once finished, can only be shattered into countless sharp, unforgiving shards.
In my life, I’ve endured pummelling heartbreak, inconsolable, life-altering loss. Sparks of raw happiness; glowing joy that emanates from my chest so bright and bold I feel limitless. I’ve experienced crushing agony, intense passion, unrequited feelings, bubbling envy, hollow emptiness, desperate loneliness, wild rage and beautiful, complex and all-consuming love.
All of these jigsaw pieces of emotion live on a giant, smooth surface in my mind. Like the surface of a board game, with ladders that ascend me to great, dizzying heights, and snakes that wrap themselves around my legs, forcing me to descend; restricting my progress.
I am full to the brim with emotions; a deep lake of thoughts and feelings. Most of my waking moments are spent wading and swimming through them, allowing them to pull me together and tear me apart at will.
I am helpless.
They often pull me under the surface and I fall victim to the strong current that pulls me further into an abyss, and further away from myself; my surface. It’s during these moments I crave the sand between my toes and I begin to panic that I’ll forget what it feels like, because all I can feel is crushing force.
Then, I’m once again pushed towards the surface. Here, I am weightless. I float in the calm, quiet peacefulness of me. I exist. I can feel the current ebbing and flowing, surging through me, reminding me that I am here and the sand will always be beneath my feet if I allow it to be.
I have done so many wonderful things. I’ve done some terrible things. Both to myself and to others. Sometimes it’s for no reason at all, and sometimes, I realise that despite my best efforts, it’s because I would like to be seen.
By you.
By them.
By me.
I’d like to be seen for the bright, shiny dynamo that I’d like to be. I am desperate to be untethered and to rise up as far as I can go before I burst, like a bright explosion of warm light, touching everyone I love down below. Like glittering, shimmering confetti, kissing their eyes, the tips of their noses, their beautiful soft lips. Gently. I want people to bask in the joy I feel sometimes – in the vision I have of and for myself – who I am, and who I’d like to become.
Other times, I don’t rise up at all. I simply endure a quiet and sudden pop. It sits in the shade. It’s a slow, perfunctory deflation that wilts me down to absolutely nothing. A momentary fog of my own making. There are no witnesses; no glitter, no gentle kisses or warmth.
I’d prefer to be seen in the thrilling, moving uncertainty that life has gifted me. The shapes it has allowed me to create, the stories it enables me to tell. The feelings that it forces me to sit with. The discomfort in my actions; the words, remarks, behaviours that have threatened to drown me in perpetual sorrow.
Because despite whether it is good or bad, I wonder endlessly about being seen and what it means.
How does it feel to strangers when our eyes meet? Do they wonder what I would be like as a friend? A lover? An enemy? Or am I simply a swirling shape on another potter’s wheel?
Am I simply a shape formed with the same capacity for love, fear, rage, confidence, lust and passion that they are, but with different blemishes, perhaps? Am I formed in a slightly harder, less malleable clay? Maybe with more sorrow, joy, despondency than they are, maybe?
Or do they not see me at all? Am I so fleeting that I don’t make an impact?
I wonder endlessly about being seen.
The first thing to happen to me was birth, and the last thing to happen to me will be death. What I experience in between is fluid; it moves with the tides I create, the room I give it to breathe, and it treats me with the same force I give it in return. At no point is anything I experience certain; at no point is it definitive.
There is nothing certain other than birth and death. Everything in between is a daily practice run.
I want so badly to get it right.
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