What’s Real, What’s Raw

They say write what you know. That the best work comes when your soul is infused into the page. I don’t usually show that writing. It’s too raw. It’s too real. I worry it will harm those I love, and those I loved. Tonight I’m working on Sentarra. The book I’ve had with me since I was eighteen, even earlier if you count the first versions. I published the first and I stopped writing it. Because I wasn’t ready for people to see my soul. Because I realized what I hadn’t while I was penning the words: it was too close to home. It was too close to me. Realizing I was raised in something based in truth but assimilated lies and misunderstandings. Realizing the way I looked at the world contradicted who I wanted to become.

I don’t regret the pain because it did give me something to write. Something real. Something that, I hope, will touch other people on as deep a level as I wrote it from. But tonight, coupled with things that happened recently, it’s again too deep and I wrote something else entirely. So forgive me, if this hurts you. But I hope it touches you in the same places you have that you fear to show anyone else. This is what it looks like when I pour my soul onto paper. Inspired by my friend Jami, who blogs feelings that are real and raw, and my other friend, Nate, who just published his book on losing his brother to suicide, I’m allowing you a glimpse of something real. Something raw. Something that, like every ache in life, carries a tinge of hope if you look hard enough. Some of it is true, some my head tells me is false. But tonight, my heart cries. I don’t know whether the heart lies or speaks what we’re too afraid to admit.

I don’t hate him. I never did. But I hate what he did to me, demanding that I choose between being loved and giving up everything that I love. I hate that when I chose, he cut me out, he pretended I wasn’t there, he pushed me away over and over and over again. I took back the spark that had died. I fanned it back to life. And it burns bright, so brightly that everyone who sees it is drawn.

But I can’t trust them. Because I don’t know whose going to try to take it away from me again. They want to capture it. To keep it in their hands for themselves until it’s smothered to death by their desire, or crushed by their contempt.  They see it. They envy it. But they have no idea the price I pay for it.

A price I made myself because I learned not to trust. Because when I tried, they left. They left me in the parking lot. They left me on the porch. They left me alone sitting in the chairs at church to go with their families, their lovers, their friends. And the ones that reached out – they only wanted my spark. They wanted to guilt me into holding their hand. They wanted to feel my body, leaving me feeling disgusting and trapped.  They want my spark but they don’t want me.

So I walk alone, monitoring them, their eyes, their manners, feeling like a hunted animal. Even the ones who are kind, I chase away. I know who I want, what he’s like, but I can’t find him. And he can’t find me. And when I glimpse him in someone, just a piece, they don’t want me either. Only the hunters, who want my spark.

And they can’t have it. Not now. Not ever. Because I know what I love. I chose it. And when he comes, he’ll have to choose it too. Because our sparks are meant to ignite each other, to do what we can’t do alone. To blaze, to change, to be extraordinary.

He doesn’t have to be perfect. He just has to be extraordinary. To be different. Some are good. Some have a place in my life. But they’re not him.

But even if I find him, I don’t know if I’ll be able to open my heart to him. Because once upon a time, I loved. I loved, and I had to choose.

I chose, and I lost.

And I believed them when they told me it was my fault. That I ruined him. I vowed never to ruin anyone else. But I can’t help it. They don’t stop – not the ones I want to. It’s like they want to be ruined.

So night after night I sit alone, avoiding, distrusting, even hating.

I have the things I love. But I don’t have the man I love.

And lately, that’s the hardest to bear.