DISTORTIONS

I’m not sure which way I prefer. Having it ripped off or slowly pulled away.

In either case it hurts. And if you remove it too early, and healing isn’t complete, you’re left with a wound that is open, exposed, and weak.

I never realized what he was until he wasn’t anymore. He fixed what seemed broken without even knowing brokenness existed.

We all have our doubts about ourselves.  Our insecurities. Things that, looking in the mirror, we wish we could change. He fogged up the funhouse mirror so greatly during our twenty years together that I no longer could see the distortions of me.

I couldn’t see the imperfect body, the face in need of fixing, the mouth that wouldn’t stay shut, nor the lawyer that wasn’t.

He saw the chasm between my perception and reality, and in his own way, joined the two. They met seamlessly in the middle. And as long as he was alive, the wounds were closed. The fog was thick. And I saw myself as he saw me.

But when he passed, the fog cleared and the distortions appeared again. The band-aid was gone and the wounds opened.

I couldn’t see me as he saw me because his eyes were gone. His encouraging words left as swiftly as they came. His lawyer wife that he treasured and cherished became an insecure little girl again. Sitting on a curb with unkempt hair and weeping to no one.

I grieved the loss of my husband and greeted the loss of the woman he once knew.

The woman I was.

It’s a task to take on grief. To live and work each day. To raise five children in humble strength.

It’s quite another to take on a wound you thought had healed. To somehow take a sledgehammer to the mirror that tells me I’m unworthy, ugly, and unintelligent.

I miss the giant band-aid I realized he was once he was gone. It was easy to live with the buoyancy of his encouraging words. His eyes that told me I was most beautiful.  His phone that would identify me as “lawyer wife” when I called. His hands that held me together and held me up.

But now I face the past, incongruently and inconveniently revisiting me so many years later. Bringing me back to the little girl sitting alone.

I know enough to know that my perception of myself is a perception ill-conceived. That while I may feel all of those things again, very few of them are actually true. My head knows this.

But my heart is struggling.

Just like anything, with time and reflection, encouragement and friendship, I’ll learn to see myself as he saw me.

And I will see me..as me. 💙

#laughterafterdeath #lookingintherearviewmirror #itsme #lifebeginsnow