I knew a boy once, who grew up feeling unseen. He had so many friends and family members, he had brothers, he had loving parents, he had coaches who saw his potential, and teachers who knew that if he just focused a little more, he could get to wherever it was he wanted to go. Despite all of these people around him, he never fully felt “full.” He didn’t feel full enough to be the best he could be, nor full enough to focus on the textbook page needed to study for the test tomorrow. He wasn’t full enough to feel that despite the party going on around him and matching outfits in family photos, he had a deep seed of loneliness. A feeling so challenging to explain, he might not even have known what it was he was trying to explain to himself and so the seed continued to grow. Sitting in his living room or in class, sitting at lunch tables or next to fellow campers by the fire or friends he would get a little too high with, sitting next to these people, he was still felt like he was sitting alone.
He began to realize that in order to be okay, he needed to accept that he couldn’t be the center of attention even though he was quite literally in the center of two brothers. For so long this boy was shown that being in the middle means that you’re not on this side and you’re also not on that side. You're neither chosen nor neither left behind, neither liked nor hated, not understood but not outcasted neither. Feeling like he was the middle option his entire life, left him with those feelings of loneliness, as if caught in a limbo. It was as if this boy had been playing chutes and ladders his entire childhood. Never quite making that step from ladder to ladder. Someone or something would trigger him to lose his footing and slip onto a chute, where he would then slide down twice as far than he had climbed up.
He began to collect sand on his feet like a tourist visiting a beach. The bottoms are wet and so as he walks, a blanket of sand keeps covering them. The more he walks toward the shower to clean them off, the more sand glues upon the previous layer. Then he gets to the shower and realizes he forgot his shoes back at his towel, and even though he just rinsed off all this collected sand, he now has to walk back through it to get his shoes. So down the chute he slides. This is the process the boy has been living his entire life. He has been feeling as though every time he gets to the shower, cleans off his sand, and thinks he’s ready to leave the beach, he looks down and realizes he doesn’t have shoes. Then he spirals back into a cycle of feeling stuck.
As the boy got older and the boy got wiser and the boy realized more and more things about himself, what he still hadn’t figured out was what to do with these things. All he ever knew was that he has these things, feelings, that wouldn’t go away, and the only time they would was if he stayed standing at that shower without his shoes, putting off walking back to his towel, for as long as possible. He tried his hardest every day, some days having to try more than others- to ride that high of feeling like his feet were finally sand-free. But the boy could only hold that feeling for so long and each time was different. Sometimes that happiness lasted for a day and sometimes it lasted for months but the walks back to his towel to get his shoes could also last for days and sometimes months.
The boy continued to get older and wiser, and the people around him noticed this boy had become a man. They noticed the matching outfits in their family’s Christmas cards and from the outside looking in, thought he had what one might consider a perfect life. There was someone else who noticed this boy had become a man and a handsome and tall one at that. She noticed that he had everything going for him. She noticed that this man could be everything that she needed to finish her own picture that she was painting for her life. She looked inward at what she thought she was missing and then outward at him knowing he could give her that, could add to her life, her worth, her family, herself. One thing led to another and she had managed to get the attention of the handsome and tall man. There wasn’t a clear beginning or reason as to why the man stood at the shower this time a little longer than usual without his shoes, but he felt a feeling of happiness that he hadn’t before.
This girl made him feel less lonely and a little more seen, a little less in the middle, and a little less in limbo. This girl was bringing some small sense of reassurance that someone was choosing him. Days turned into months, months turned into years, and she made him feel good. It was as if he stood standing there at the shower with clean feet for the longest he had yet, only now he was sharing that shower with someone else. While he was relieved to be standing there with someone rather than alone, there was now less water to wash away his sand because she was there using half of it.
For a brief second or a day, or month or maybe even years, he might have thought to himself, “This is what love is.” He might have thought “I still feel these things inside of me and I still don’t know what to do with them, but standing here in the water with her is better than walking back to my towel to get my shoes.” The thought of going through that cycle again was more scary than choosing to just stay there with her. Even though he was relieved to be standing there with clean feet, even though he was relieved someone was finally standing there with him, deep down he knew he needed his shoes to leave the beach. While he felt okay, and maybe less lonely, and maybe as if this girl might see him as tall and handsome, he also knew he would rather just go get his shoes.
—
Sometimes in life, love grows in the way that lotus flowers grow in mud. The leaves on a lotus flower are round and large and impermeable. Water can be splashed on the lotus leaves and the droplets almost immediately roll off. The flower will only ever grow just shy of six centimeters. In many cultures the beauty of how a flower can grow in mud is beautiful. Sometimes in life, we find beauty even in things we know we shouldn’t find beautiful. Sometimes we take tarnished things, dark and dirty things, and try to associate them with a beautiful meaning to outweigh the fact that they really are just that- tarnished.
Sometimes in life, love grows in the way that lotus flowers grow in mud. You can splash the leaves and the water will roll off. Similarly, the girl and man splashed each other with angry words and the pattern became so normal, that their violence just rolled off. The girl and the man grew love, but could only expand into a small six centimeter flower. As much as it was beautiful that they persevered through mud, they were also blinded by the fact that they had stopped growing. Sometimes in life, love grows in the way that lotus flowers grow in mud. The mud that causes them to disagree and yell at each other, the mud that puts themselves first, that gets a glass of water and doesn’t think to get one for the other. The mud that lifts you up, but knocks you down even more. Lotus flowers will not just grow anywhere, you have to grow them in the mud- without mud, you cannot have a lotus flower. Sometimes in life, love grows in the way that lotus flowers grow in mud- beautifully, but conditionally.
This man no longer wanted angry words splashing his leaves, no longer wanted his roots to be muddy, no longer wanted to be prevented from growing, nor to share his water. And so he walked away from the girl at the shower, back to his towel for his shoes, and left the beach with sandy feet. For reasons only he knows, he traveled to a bar on a Wednesday evening in November. For reasons only he knows, he felt sad and happy at the same time.
—
He saw a woman who’s hair fell just below the tattoo she had written on the back of her neck. He saw her blue sweater sitting softly over a striped flowing dress. He saw her white converse bouncing up and down as though she was intently trying to figure something out and by doing this she would find the answer. The woman looked away from the conversation she was having and then she looked right into him and she smiled. As she smiled, her green eyes got smaller where her cheeks lifted up into themselves and when she said her name, for a brief moment, he forgot about his sadness he left with the girl at the shower.
The man became astonished by the fact that on a Wednesday evening in the middle of a cold November, he could bump into something so warm. When he met the woman the next Sunday afternoon, he felt excited about the unknown that came with her short hair, green eyes, and cheeky smile. For that day, he was happy. For that day, he looked out across a rolling green hill and saw an abundance of flowers with no mud in sight.
They met again on a Tuesday evening and talked for hours. The man and the woman did not talk in the way you speak to someone on a plane to detract from engine noise, nor because the silence of a stranger feels too quiet. The man and the woman did not talk in the way a professor speaks to a classroom of students teaching them things didn’t want to know, but signed up for because they had to. They did not talk in the way a waitress converses with her table because she knows the nicer she is the better the tip.
They talked in the way that you gaze up at the stars in the night sky and try to make sense of why some of them look just like pots and pans and how something you are so far away from feels so close to you. They talked in the way you look up at the clouds moving with the wind and if you focus intently enough, you notice it is slowly moving across the sky almost as if to define what calm means. They talked in the way you look up at the Empire State building in awe at how tall it reaches upward, the way you look up at the height of a ski run that is about to be the reason for all your fun and adventure, the way you look up in an elevator to see that the ceiling is mirrored and you’re staring right back at yourself. They talked in the way you look up to something, the way you look up to someone.
When the man and the woman were children, their parents both told them to never place their elbows on the table for it wasn’t good etiquette. In that moment he sat across from the most interesting woman and she sat across from the most fascinating man, there were four elbows placed on the table that night. This is how it was between the two, it wasn’t just exciting, it was exhilarating. Exhilarating like when she was five years old and tall enough to ride the rollercoasters. Even though her mom told her dad not to let her ride the big ones, he let her anyway. The attendant's hand measured her head to pass the height minimum and she got a little rush that she was doing something no other kid could do. The rush when the bar went down on her waist and the ride took off, and around and around she went, having the time of her life. It was the same rush the woman now had when she was with this man. She got a rush because she was feeling something with him, knowing it was something that no other man could manage to do. The same rush reminding her that she was having the time of her life.
—
Everything in a Gray Wolf’s nature tells it to belong to something greater than itself, a pack. They live in packs, but run in pairs. One wolf chooses another and the other chooses them back and they typically stay together for life, a lifetime partnership. Gray wolves often travel at five miles an hour, but can reach speeds of up to forty. Their affection lies heavily in the capability of being felt or touched. If you ever have the opportunity to witness two wolves in love, you might even see one placing his head right on top of the other’s neck. They care for their injured companions and they don’t discriminate against the weak and the strong. Sometimes in life, two people fall in love like gray wolves. Sometimes they fall in love at five miles an hour and sometimes at forty. They care for their companion to the point where they would do anything to take away the pain from what the other is feeling. They cry to know that at one point in your life you have cried. The thought of seeing a tear fall across your face makes them never want to leave your side, should you need that tear to be wiped away. When they stop to take a drink of water during their journey they make sure the ice to the river is solid enough for the others wolves to have a drink too. Sometimes in life people fall in love like gray wolves. They feel felt, not just touched. They feel understood, not just heard. They are not just in love, they feel love. Sometimes in life people fall in love like gray wolves and if you ever have the opportunity to be one of those wolves, feel it.
The woman would have loved the man on the days where he couldn’t love himself. She would have loved him on the days, the months, or the years when he could only give twenty and she eighty. She would have loved him when he felt broken and on the days when he felt whole. She would have loved him enough to be the brief moment, day, month, and year, that he could hold onto when he was afraid everything else was slipping away. She would have loved him like gray wolf, beautifully and unconditionally.
The man finally felt full, but to care for a lotus flower is much easier than to care for a wolf. Sometimes in life people try to wash off the sand from their feet, but no matter how hard they try they find themselves unable to leave the beach.