seemelovemeunderstandme

[seemelovemeunderstandme]

pool - a symbolic rant

I’m wearing this really fancy dress. Plastered in white and dressed with intricate lace, pearls dispersed throughout the silk. I have this crown made for royalty on my head, covered in diamonds that shoot off a million different rays of light. I look like a top-tier woman, making myself as displayable and possible for my potential male partner. The weird thing about all of this, besides the fact that I’m dressed up in wedding attire to attract a man, is that I’m actually in the setting of this gigantic pool. The pool is so enticing and inviting. The ripples looking so much more dazzling than the ones glued onto the frame of my crown. The underwater, looking so calming and quiet--something that I’m craving at this very moment, surrounded by such discord that is pleasing to the ears of the ones who wish to hear it. I don’t feel the need to drown, just the necessity to stay afloat.

So many suitors walk past, brushing a casual and suggestive kiss across my cheek. With each gesture, I conjure a smile of both devotion and promiscuity, two things that I cannot physically fathom in a natural sense. They don’t have ill will, nor do they necessarily look down upon me, but I cannot help but make excuses to not intertwine myself with one of them in bed, or merely a romantic relationship, in order to cover up the real truth.

I would be taking the risk of ruining of my parent’s money and hard work by jumping into the pool with all of these garments on. I would be horribly guilty, even though the desire to lather myself in purified water, to cleanse myself of lie and deceit, is overwhelming to the point of even more overbearing anxiety.

This is both a moral and practical issue--plunge into the pool, and you damage the materials woven into your breathtaking dress, also losing the fine jewels that cover your headpiece. Therefore, by even taking a dip into that body of water, you’ll disappoint your parents, your entire family, your friends, your school, your team, and, most hauntingly, yourself. You’ll never be able to take that outward expression back. If you publicly display what internally chokes you up, churns your stomach, and makes you profusely sweat, you’ll never know what true love will be.

Though, if that’s the case--that when I reveal my inner turmoil, that the ones who have been alongside me throughout my developmental stages will abandon me--does that even qualify as true love? True love, finding someone who intrigues you from the start, discovering that their personality sends you into way more of a swoon than you even thought was possible, that you eventually discover their said downfalls, that you sooner or later witness those hardships in real life with them, and that you stick it out with them like you’re they’re right arm, nonetheless. True love, that when you tell them things, you feel as if you’re talking to the sky, someone you know that will not judge you. Not because they’re not allowed to, but they feel no need to. That they see the real you and the cherish the rawness that manifests in the soul and emerges out of the mouth, hands, eyes, tears, moves of dance, bad habits, fears, favorite things, and in everything else that you never realized would make much difference to you knowing or not.

Suddenly, even though the thought of my parents’ adversity and frustration scares me to the core that they’ve assisted in creating, I recognize that this is what I’ve not only wanted, but needed all along. When you live in a pressure-filled situation, that pressure compounds the breath in your lungs, the ability for your brain to function normally, the bones that allow you to stand up straight, the muscles that allow you to fight your oppressors or understandably flee from them, and the entirety of your body that consistently reminds you you’re alive. I’m deprived from this atmospheric pressure that was put on me by the people who thought they knew me, like I was a character in a book and they relied on the author’s outside viewpoint, not mine, to determine where my life would lead me. I need to feel a new kind of pressure, an exciting pressure that pushes me to try the things that terrified me but were the right things for me in the end. The pressure that forces me to rip off the tape covering my mouth and speak my truth, no matter if it is more frightening for me to hear myself say it than it would be for my closest ones.

The only things separating the words “life” and “lie” are the letter “f” and fulfillment. Life is overflowing with potential fulfillment, as long as you live by you in the benefit of you and others. In other words, showing the world how the real you was created as empowers others to branch out, disregarding the horrific opposition that is prevalent in towns close and nations far.

If I can’t come to terms with myself, I’ll watch the life that I was meant to have flow by like a movie that I wish was real. I’m done being the critical audience to my biography. I need to be the fearless director that shows all of the nude scenes, the violence, the profuse swearing, all of the nitty-gritty that is typically pushed away into the category of “indie” and rarely ever makes the big screen.

The underwater light beckons me over to shine its glow onto my skin, so layered in plaster as to hide the beating body, which instinctively craves the love that every human rightfully deserves, inside of it. At this signal, I pace along the tiles, not one touched by a speck of water. Avoidance due to fear, fear due to avoidance. They are the same, and they are ultimately damaging.

I am standing at the brink of familiarity and the unknown. I have never touched the water before, but I know that I have always been drawn to it. I have always been curious about it, seeing it in the streets that my parents passed muttering, finding it on websites after I figured out how to turn off the child safety feature. I am wavering on the edge of who built me and of who loved me, but I can’t tell the difference.

At this, I fall forward. And, I have to tell you--falling never felt more like flying.