Other woman, I see you.
Hair tinged with wisdom and passion and wild, reaching out from your head as if to celebrate your mind. I do, sometimes, from afar, because to adore you even just a little feels like a betrayal of how I am supposed to feel about you. Your talents are stacked deep like books but not the dusty, ancient tomes we consult when we have nowhere else to go. No, yours are the shiny, new best-sellers. All the best things. All the best stories that people line up to read. I’ll never write like you or be written like you but I’d love to hear you read your own words to me, to know the passion you sometimes hide behind those big words that you think make you sound like another woman. I wish I had your ability to turn off the world and fall into the things you love to create. I wish I had your drive…your compulsion?…to write everything down and make it beautiful and decorate it with flowers. I imagine you will be a very beautiful woman even when you are 80 and still making beautiful things with your hands. I wish I had met you in another time when you weren’t so suspicious of other people’s shiny spots. The truth is, I wish we could be friends but that would be dangerous. For both of us.
Other woman, I see you.
There was a time when I was you and there are times when I still am you and I hate those moments with a burning passion. I’ve tried, I’ve tried to see through you so that I could forgive those parts of myself. Those messy, dirty parts where we can’t see our own diamonds and mistake everything around us for shit and filth when it’s really just the ground remains of everything we’ve scorched. I mentally cradle you sometimes, and tell you that yes, yes my darling, you are so so so very beautiful but you won’t believe me even as I softly croon to you. You’ll bat my touches away and jump up and run to the window and pull up your dress to show the people on the street what you’ve got that’s special and I’ll sit back in my chair and cry for you, wishing you’d just listen. Inwardly. Sometimes I wonder what you think to yourself when you are alone at night, so very alone, drumming furiously on keys and phone lines just hoping that someone, somewhere will echo back to you..Yes, yes, yes my darling, you’re the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life. What I would tell you or myself if either of us would listen is that we are more alike than either one of us like to admit and we hate the things we love about each other and we try on each other’s moods like dresses and swish back and forth wishing the mirror would just give us what we wanted. But for now, I stay back because even as I feel for what you reflect to me, I know that I’m ready to love you but that you are not ready to be loved. And that is dangerous for both of us.
Other woman, I see you.
I once thought you were my Mother and I made the mistake of racing around that track as if I could fix it all by winning…what. By winning what. By winning what. A better version of me? A better version of my own Momma? A better something? But you were there during so many things I thought I would never withstand. So many times my heart blew right out of my chest with ache and pain and sadness and “never learning this lesson again” and you were so loving and kind and generously held up the mirror for me and said, “Look at that girl. Look at her gifts. Look at her magic.” and through your eyes I was able to start to see. For years, I held hands with you as we figured out our shit and traded the load when your own Momma made you feel small and I remembered the tools you showed me and got out our mirror and held it up for you and said, “Look at that girl. Look at her gifts. Look at her magic.” and you allowed me to cover you in healing and everything was alright. Somewhere along the way, I left the nest and I didn’t know how you would feel abandoned. How my own independence would sting like a betrayal and how you’d feel used and how you’d feel my audacity at changing. How you’d look me in the eye and say, “How dare you grow. You didn’t even consult me” and how I would say back to you “How dare you expect me to stay the same. How dare you love me enough to want me to grow but then punish me for not clipping my own wings”. I’ll never do that for anyone ever again. Not even you, beloved. I love you enough to let you go and that is dangerous for both of us.
Other woman, I see you.
I am sometimes my Mother. Beautiful, but doubting. Magical, but filled with imposter syndrome. Smart, but questioning. I know these things about myself and yet I never know. I want these things for myself and yet I want nothing to do with them. Maybe I’ll get really brave one day and shave my head, throw away my makeup, turn off my social media accounts, sell all my shoes, paint my walls with weird pink murals, dye my eyebrows purple, and run screaming into a field of waist-high wildflowers where the sun will beat the shit out of my creamy skin and I’ll feel the kind of freedom that only comes from being that screaming girl in a field of flowers. I’ll scream with joy and rage and hope and sorrow. I’ll scream so goddamned loud that my throat will swell and my heart will hammer in my chest and I’ll scream until tears run down my face and all the women I’ve ever known or loved or wanted to be finally come home to my heart. I’ll scream to them like a lighthouse on the ocean. I’ll scream so hard and fast they will throw down their work and run to me, arms open, fangs flashing in the sunshine. I’ll scream and scream and scream until I finally see them cresting the top of the hill, coming for me in love and fury and hunger. Finally home in my heart. Where we will eat each other alive. And that is dangerous for all of us.
So very dangerous. For all of us.