Once upon a time a little girl was born.
Time passed, life happened, the little girl “grew up” and became a woman.
Along the way a story was created, one that the woman carries deep inside of her, and it goes like this:
A child sits with her back to a wall. Her crisscrossed form is supported by a blacktop surface that is radiating heat from the midday sun. Wisps of hair float to and fro, untethered from her ponytail, bothered by a gentle breeze. The wall she leans against, a flat, generic beige, is textured with miniscule peaks and valleys, easily eroded by the scrape of a fingernail or a stray kickball. In the distance the sounds of children at play can be heard. She squints, nose wrinkling from the effort, and watches, longing to go to the children, to join them, to be a part of them, but she does not attempt this. The desire to be noticed is overwhelming, but she does not call out. Never does she leave her post. Serving as both protection and penance, she dwells there, unattended, unnoticed – alone.
This scene, an assemblage of fact blended with fiction, is where the past and the present meet to form the melancholic truth of who I am. That at my core, I am this child. This child is me. The unstated assumptions being, that I am someone who is unsure, uncertain, insecure, lonely. Someone who is never quite getting started. Someone who is forever waiting for permission, waiting for someone else’s approval – living in a limbo that refuses to relent.
And then one day the story changed.
One day, after years of living and lots and lots and lots of work, the woman realized that what she had been waiting for all along was not outside of herself – would not be found in another. What she realized was that all she needed, all she ever needed, was inside of her all along.
Now the story goes like this:
As the little girl sits, watching, waiting, longing, a shadow interrupts her reverie. She tilts her face up to the sky and finds her likeness looking down at her. This likeness, this woman, takes a seat, crisscrosses her legs, and leans against the beige wall. The girl and the woman turn their heads and behold one another. A smile forms on each of their faces. Shoulder to shoulder they breathe in a steady knowing. Together, they look out and bear witness to the world beyond them – finally content, finally at peace, ready to move or stay put, safe in the recognition that acceptance and love already reside here, safe in the realization that anything and everything is possible.