An open letter to a broken girl...
The truth is when I first met you I was worried about falling in love with you. The way you are frightened by something you don’t fully understand, so powerful yet so mysterious. I was drawn in by your past, not afraid of it. I loved you because of your scars, inside and out, not despite them. I fell for you too quick to act on my fear, too quick to pull away, too quick to find a girl without a past, without anxiety, a girl who was whole. But you didn’t give me time. You didn’t give me a second to breathe. I drowned in you, like an ocean I could not see the bottom or the horizon, and it was beautiful. You pulled me in without any effort, and my worry quickly turned into surprise. How could a girl so broken love me so wholly? How could someone who has had everything taken from her give to me so freely? How could someone so broken make me feel so whole?
Your mystery grew, as my worry vanished. It quickly turned into uncertainty. Why could I look in the same mirror as you and see a different reflection. How could you hold me up so high from so low? How could I drown in you if you only thought of yourself as a puddle?
Where you saw a puddle on a street corner stepped on by every chaotic soul rushing off to their destination, I saw a vast ocean. Where you saw a caterpillar I saw a butterfly, and where you saw a storm I saw the flowers that would grow.
I would be lying if I said loving you became understanding you. In fact it became harder. Harder to understand myself even. You gave me what you could not give yourself, and that I will never comprehend, forever mourn, and forever try to fix.
But loving you is not like putting a puzzle back together. Its not like fixing a leak, or gluing pieces of a shattered life back together. Loving you is like building a sand castle on the shore, then watching the smallest wave wash it away. Trying to build up my creation, all while battling the wind, trying not to crush it myself, and watching the very ocean I’m building the castle for wash it away in a wave made up of self doubt, the past, and depression.
All while not realizing a puddle does not have waves.
I will not promise you a perfect sand castle. I will not promise you the tide will not wash away my progress tomorrow, and I will not tell you that I know how to build it strong enough so it will not blow away in the wind, or sturdy enough so I will not crush it myself, or tall enough that the waves cannot touch it. I will not promise you what I cannot give you.
What I will promise is that tomorrow, I will be there. With my pail. And my shovel. And respect for the depth of your mystery and the vastness of your horizon, a willingness to pick up each grain of sand if I need to... And absolutely no idea how to love you.
But that’s the thing. A puddle would be easy. A puddle I could figure out. A puddle I would know how to love. But I’m drowning in you. And one thing I know, is that you cannot drown in puddles.
