Two months ago, I was sitting in the living room of my boyfriend's house talking about all the things that intrigue and fascinate me about life as he put up Christmas lights. That’s usually how it goes with us. He does something super useful while I contemplate existence. When I'm not feeling completely horrible about the fact that I am essentially useless when it comes to anything remotely practical, I fall so deeply in love with him, life, and all the ways these things I love can put up with me as they go about loving me.
He was just finishing up the Christmas lights around the doorway as he tossed the lights on top of me and went to the bathroom. I down looked at myself tangled up in the lights and something occurred to me in a place so deep that it's impossible to come to without tears.
I am beautiful.
The feeling struck me so powerfully that I sit weeping about it even now as I remember it. I knew it like I had just been showered in pixie dust, like what it feels like to fly. Tears began to trickle down my face as I saw how true it was. I saw myself tangled up in Christmas lights and remembered what I am. How I glow. It was not a revelation that I am kind or selfless or any of the reasons that we like to compliment another soul, but a revelation that I exist.
Sometimes I wonder if we really knew the meaning of that word, it would make us shudder.
I saw my existence as so much more than you, I or anyone knew, and possibly more than we could ever know. I was no better than anyone else and I was certainly no worse. I was not exceptional, special, or gorgeous. I was simply beautiful, in the truest sense of the word.
I saw the beauty that day that catches the human soul off guard in a gasp of awe as if symphonies played in the ambient. It was such a strange and mystical moment to be caught up not in awe of God, a sunset, or a mountain, but in the awe of me. This kind of beauty I know is a mystery that I have not come close to scratching the surface of.
So I guess I would like to ask you, if I may for just this moment believe that?
May I see myself and be amazed? May I wonder at the mystery of me as I would if I had come across the face of God?
May I be so alive with the electricity of being that my own body begins to quiver and shake at the wealth of which lies inside of it?
May I do it without asking?
I guess I want to ask you this because you are the ones that I am so intensely afraid of. You have always been the ones since I was the littlest girl, I have had to overcome. I am not sure you even know the immense power of your opinions, even the ones that don’t exist anywhere but in my head.
You are the gatekeepers. Your likes, your comments, the remarks you make of others in front of me. You all have held all the power over me that I could only dream of having over myself.
I live terrified much more often than anyone would think. I am often confused, disheartened, and ashamed of what I lack. Even my best friends are shocked when I tell them of a certain day, week, or month that I felt depressed. I know I owe it to them to be honest so that they don’t believe falsely that I’m just one of those who has it figured out, but I have never been very good at that. I will rip myself open for all to see after I have overcome a thing, but I gawk at women who can admit they are not doing well in the middle of it. It is a superpower, I am sure of it.
My dysfunction may be what makes me a great writer. And yes, of course it feels odd to call myself that. But it is also a title I learned from you, my gatekeepers. You tell me what you see in me and I learn slowly what I have to offer the world.
To offer the world, what a strange concept. I am not naive enough to think that it in any way does more for you than it does for me. So thank you very much for taking what I have to offer. It makes me feel so much better that even though I don’t at all like putting up Christmas lights or starting friendly conversations with the neighbors, that I do have something to give happily. What a relief it is to, for an evening, have reprieve of painful pleasantries.
So thank you, my gatekeepers, for throwing your Christmas lights on me before you run to the bathroom and, for a moment, letting me see myself
inarticulably beautiful.
