. On Magic .

BFF Suzy is cold reading a book that one of our mutual friends is writing. She speaks about lines from the book often, reflecting on the power of words. Just the other day, she said that our friend - who is living a big, wide open dream of her own - wrote about honesty. 

Not just honesty with her husband, but honesty with herself. 

And I kinda thought that was something. 

When I was married, I was often busy with my hands. “Look over here,” I’d smile and shout. “Look at what I’m doing over here,” I’d tell people. And inside, I’d think, And whatever you do, do not look at what’s going on behind me.

Because behind me was a hidden hot mess of a broken, busted machine that was missing all kinds of important parts.

And then, when it was all burned to the ground, I took on the hard mantra of no more yielding. It’s a line I sort of jacked from Shakespeare, but it’s served me well for two years.

You do the hard (and right) things.
You say the hard (and right) things. 
You value your own thoughts. 
You listen to your whispers.

Just the other night, Craig and I had an important conversation about “the future”. And I realized (again) that we’re each still carrying a bag of surprises with us. Neither of us know what is in our bags until one of us rubs up against a raw spot - something still hurting from the last failed attempted at Something Serious or Something Special. 

I stayed awake for a long time that night, thinking about how you begin again after living through something that was so sideways and so far from whatever you thought it would ever be. And I couldn’t help but wonder how you stop the same things from happening again. It feels like stopping a freight train … a train that you don’t see coming, and a train that has no clear destination.

Craig has old hurts that are obviously not mine to discuss, and so clearly inappropriate to publicize here, but it left me bewildered. So often he doesn’t speak about them (like all of us). Buried deep in his chest is a check list of wrongs - things that are cut so deeply into him. Engrained in the fibers of who he is and … don’t we all? 

Don’t we all have frayed edges of dreams we lost? Fragmented moments that we hold so close to our bodies, and scars that we cling to for their memories and the knowledge that we survived. As he slept next to me - his deep breaths even and long, I wondered not just about him, but about people in general. I wondered how people still live their days freely, with faith wide and true … even through the fear. 

​The fear that it could all go sideways again.
The fear that you might be in ten times deeper than they are. 
The fear that you might be left standing there. 

Again. 

In the rain on a Thursday afternoon. 
Feeling through the wake of a hurt you’ve somehow already felt. 

And oh my stars, I don’t know. 

What I do know is that I’m no longer cut out to be a magician. I can’t be the girl anymore that turns tricks with her hands to hide the charred bits of a lesson learned behind her. 

No. 

If anything is real and true and certain, the thing I know for sure --
The thing I know for sure the most — 

Is the glaringly obvious. 

Life is nestled in honesty.

A quiet pause to remember where he’s come from.
A gentle reminder on a Saturday night to him that I have old hurts, too. And the steel - the hard, hot, searing truth - found in the girl that will not live that lesson again.

Yes. Yes, it’s true. 

The only way from point A to point B is honesty. 

I think that must be how you do it.

Small steps towards some kind of finish line that's out there.
Ahead of you and me and us and we - 
Out there somewhere. 

So, take the small steps heavily coated in realness. Listen to those whispers that reach up through your soul - small mercies that remind you that faith even though you're scared is brave. 

Honesty is brave, brave, brave. 

And so are you. 

xoxo, B.