Grasping All The Broken
I’ve grown a lot since Dixie days of ‘yore. I can stand on my own two feet now. Well, financially anyway. Have I changed? Not by much. I’m still looking for love in all the wrong places. Still putting on my tough girl façade. Not letting in the boys because deep down, I am still scared. Perhaps, the real me and Dixie are the same. I can’t seem to find the answers.
I let dates and boyfriends pass me by. Not really anyone seems to matter. In all the days and months that have passed me by there hasn’t really been one that ever has an impact on my life.
I managed to stumble upon one. He wasn’t like all the other ones. He didn’t “babydoll” me, flash around money, or tell me how amazing I am. He told me the truth. He told me I wasn’t perfect. That I was flawed, that deep down, I had scars I tried to hide. He saw all these things, but still talked to me.
I was embarrassed at first; embarrassed that he saw all the damage inside. I scrambled to cover it. To hide it like I did from everyone else, but there was no fooling him. It’s like that dream you have where you’re 15-years-old standing naked in your high school cafeteria. He saw my ugly. My wounds. The vulnerable girl I always kept a secret.
He claims the first time he met me I was Dixie. Not the real me. Maybe I was fake. Maybe he was right; maybe I had become smitten with him and had to become Dixie to protect myself. In case he wasn’t real. In case I was just hurting myself.
We don’t know each other very well. We both admit it. But, Christ, he somehow was able to see all the fucked up parts of my life. In that mess, it made me care about him even more. If someone could take the time to gaze into my fucked up haze, then just maybe…
Who am I kidding? I’m sure he is the lucky one; the one that gets away without having to see the train wreck happen. Maybe he read the ending before the book started and didn’t stick around for what’s in the middle.
I had played out our departure in my head earlier in the night. I had planned to thank him, to tell him how I really felt. That I liked him. That I cared about him. That I understood his feelings too. Oh, but, alas, that is never the way things go. For me, they never go as planned. Always some morphed picture of the idea I once had.
I’m actually not certain I will see him again. Not sure that after all the excavating of the burial grounds inside me he found anything worth keeping, My feelings and gratitude go out to him anyway.
Tonight, I’ll go to sleep without knowing if anyone will be able to understand me. That anyone can solve this mystery.
I just don’t think anyone can grasp all this broken in their hands.
