The fall
This month is about expectations. The cross some of us carry is the product of a past that, when viewed from afar and through the fog of forgetting, left only the shining gold and lost sight of the clay from which it came. Whether marble or wood, the fall from a pedestal hurts the same. Those who take your hands to hold you up there will let go under the weight of the descent. Silence is what remains after the blow. Stillness, for a few seconds, until, little by little, everything comes into… clarity. We find ourselves naked and aching in the sight of others.
So why do I feel peace in my soul? Why, when I look upward, when I hear the disappointment in their words and in their eyes, do I feel warmth in my chest? I cannot know how much truth lived in the image their imagination made of me, but perhaps I take comfort in the thought that, after so many years, they finally see me. It is not the image I wish to project, nor the one I should, nor the one they want, but it is the pure truth. And in the death of my idea, at last, I am born.