Finding Forty, Day 233; Linger

Once, after S and I made love,  I felt immediately shy and embarrassed by my nakedness, my body, my vulnerability.

  We were standing in the bathroom and he turned me towards the mirror, held my hands down by my side so I couldn't grasp to uplift my breasts or try to cover the tributary of stretch marks adorning my belly.

"Look into the mirror," he said.  "Look at you and how beautiful you are, all of you.  All of you.  You need to open your eyes and see the truth."

 I awoke this morning sometime after 5 from a dream about him.   Lately, when he enters my dreams, I feel a sense of urgency to garner his attention, to keep him around, to get him to stay.   In the dream today, we somehow ended up sitting at a table and before me were piles of envelopes, cards, a project.  As I sorted through the goods, I saw a packet for an upcoming run.   Running was something we shared, loved to talk about and even did together twice.   In the dream, I wanted to invite myself to do the run with him and then realized he was already running with a large group of friends and family to raise money for a charitable cause.   He had handwritten many letters and envelopes to try to solicit donations and interest. Below the pile of running information I also found birthday party invitations for one of his niece's.   Apparently he and his wife were going to host a party for her at their house.   I got up to go find him a bag to hold all of his things and by the time I returned, he was gone.   My dream ended with me scanning the parking lot for his red truck, which obviously, was nowhere to be found.

Maybe dreams are just dreams.   Perhaps they are just random, weird, thoughts that bind themselves together in the darkness of the morning and the corners of our minds.

Yet I can't help but wonder if I'm not still standing naked in front of that bathroom mirror, afraid, insecure, frail and this time, the person behind me is simply me.  I am holding myself up, lifting my chin, looking straightforward at the emerging person before me and saying, "Look at you.  Look at the truth, see things for what they are."

What the truth is is a person who is lonely, but not alone.   Somehow I need to make the switch to embracing alone, but letting loneliness fall by the wayside.   Somehow I need to see my truths for what they are, the good, the bad, the ugly, the real.  

Today I won't be immobilized with fear.   I will take the advice of well meaning supporters and start small, 15 minutes at first.   And when those seconds have ticked by, I will reassess and try to add on another 15 minutes.  I won't even worry about which task to tackle first, I'll just work and do and be.

I'm not at home in front of the mirror just yet, but I'm not afraid anymore to just cast a sideways glance and maybe let it linger a bit longer than before.