Ordinary

Sometimes it helps to say it out loud
to confront it as it is;
to look it in the eyes and stare it down
thus proving that it is not more powerful
than the decision I get to make in light of it.

I realized recently that I say these words
frequently
“I’m not really good at anything.”
I usually follow it up with encouragement,
“but I’m just going to do my best.”
It doesn’t necessarily feel degrading,
but it doesn’t feel healthy either.
It reeks of a tool that trains me to accept
as it seeks
to cover my pain with contentment.

I can trace it back,
to the event where this phrase was birthed:
When asked directly,
the one person I ever wanted
to be proud of me searched
but could find nothing nice to say of me.
I didn’t even realize there was someone
I wanted to make proud,
until I didn’t.

I don’t blame them, really,
I’ve never been the kind of person
who catches the light…
I’m the kind you have to unbury.

As I looked my declaration in the eye today
I could see that though it started somewhere
it was reaffirmed again and again
in the safe place of the past.
Rejection had a way of following me…
unacceptable and unwanted were sentiments that plagued
me from childhood,
but there was one place that made it bearable—
one place of belonging
one place where I believed I stood
in desirable light;
where others chose to see me and
to believe I was worth loving,
and it put the averted eyes in their place.

It’s no one’s fault, really,
I was born into a field of extraordinary beauty
but didn’t add to it…
because some people were made to behold
not to be beheld,
and I'm the lucky one.

It’s not that I don’t find joy in
my ordinary,
it is just that I find myself sad
that my safe place has lost
its desire for it.