#morning reflection

[cdx1016]

Mirror Mirror 🪞 Egret checking her morning reflection. (viacarad1016)

[frozendarkmoon]

Felt like ruminating a bit. Might get a little real, but can ensure I am not upset or in crisis. Just... Reflective.

I find myself wondering at the interplay between the effort I make to play to my role and the ease others see it as. Is there a space between those two? I find myself hearing that others believe I simply am happy, positive, hopeful; some outright claim to know that I am. I can assure you I am not. It took 20-odd years to learn to be any of that, and each day I have to put no small amount of effort into doing so.

I have already accepted the I that exists in the eyes of others is different to the me that writhes beneath the mask the world sees. I have accepted it shall be their memories of myself that will survive my (gods willing, far and distant) death. I have even accepted I am to never truly understand the people I grow close with. All I have is what I experience, which is dreadfully short of what another human can be.

I am 'surrounded by a bubble of positivity' because I have grabbed and forced it around me. It takes effort, it takes endurance, and it takes acknowledgement that I am not that which wears the mask, but simply the mask I wear. The lonely child weeping, unhealed and unfound and unheard, and the cold and traumatized and dissociating woman go unknown.

Perhaps that is for the best. To know another person, top to bottom, sounds... Horrifying. I would not wish true, honest knowledge of the concept known as Frosty upon any. To the same end, I choose to accept and befriend and love (romantically and platonically) those I do not know fully with that as the baseline for my acceptance. I do not know them, fully, and they shall always have secrets and things to reveal to me that merely scratch the surface of what is below. Even one I've known for ten plus years has new surprises to me.

It is a selfish endeavor. I do not wish for isolation any longer, to hurt and to weep alone. I chose the mask that enables me to get close to others. I walk among them, they smile at me, accept me, and I do the same. It falls into the void in my chest, but perhaps one day that warmth will seal it closed.

To me, that is the social contract between human beings. I am not so pretentious as to pretend this is some grand revelation, some life changing thought, that a woman in her mid 20s has had a fully original thought. It is something that has been bothering me, though. Perhaps the true purpose of writing this is simply organizing it. To dig into the idea that people are complicated, and perhaps minds such as I are doomed to find them fascinating and horrible in turns.

I wonder how deep the divide between the concept and the truth of I there is. If others knew the fear that dogs each word I speak; If they knew the way I will shift to something cold and cruel when the winds change; if they came to know that divide and disconnect, would they still love me, accept me, count me as a friend?

I have no doubt they would, but perhaps that is simply me underestimating the divide between their role and their own Self.

[sinkintoink]

Morning sketches.

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Morning reflection

Lofoten Islands, Norway

By Martin Morávek

[cdx1016]

Morning Lines of Light and Promise

(viacarad1016)

Thursday February 19th @5:45am

[cdx1016]

Morning Reflection (viacarad1016)

Stamford, CT

[cdx1016]

Morning Reflection 💕

(viacarad1016)

[cdx1016]

Reflections on Holly Pond. 5:50am

Stamford, CT (viacarad1016)