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Friday, November 15, 2013

THE MASQUERADE (REVISED)


The Masquerade


Love’s endless masquerade.  Not so much a party, more like a never-ending game.  I pretend I am this woman and you pretend you are that man and we pretend that everything is perfect.  But we never truly connect, because you cannot feel the touch of another with gloves on.

I am not perfect, I hate to be the one to tell you that.  In fact, I am as far from being perfect as a person can get.  I am not always the goody-two-shoes over-achiever with drive and ambition that I appear to be.  I am boring at times and don’t always have something interesting to say.  I can be lazy at times, stubbornly resistant to change and often choose the path of least resistance.  I tend to get frustrated when people do stupid things and I don’t always have something positive to offer as feedback when that happens.  Most of the time, I choose to ignore it and pretend it doesn't really bother me until I've let my frustrations build up to the point I lose my both my patience and my temper.

Sometimes I cry at the simplest things, like during certain tv commercials or when I can’t fit into my jeans.  Sometimes I feel as though I am stuck in a life I didn’t create for myself, like it is leading me rather than my leading it, as if my life is the product of circumstance and not of deliberate action.  Eventually I realize my malaise is just the by product of feeling a loss of control over my choices and that I am being too hard on myself.  This is the same sort of thing that most people lament, thinking that every moment of life is supposed to have meaning and most of the time it is the quite the opposite; life’s meanings have moments.  It is the journey that counts, not arriving at the destination.

The roles we play in this game of love can be quite maddening at times.  I am supposed to appear as I am always cheerful, playful, and brilliant.  Always full of energy, always light and uncomplicated.  That is just not me.  I am complicated, contradictory even.  I am constantly thinking and analyzing things, trying to rework any given situation in my mind until it finally works in the way I derive the greatest degree of satisfaction.  My art professor described this process precisely when she said, "Sometimes, you can beat a dead horse back to life." 

I am not quite sure what I want most of the time or what I mean by the things I say.  I don’t need to be interpreted or even to be understood.  I just need to be accepted for who I am, as unpredictable as that may be.  I’d like to think that I am a work in progress, that the best parts of me are still slowly being realized.

This role-playing makes me have to pretend that I don't feel incredible when your around me, smiling at me, saying my name.  I'm not supposed to let you see how you make me tremble when you move in to reach for something just past me.  I am also not supposed to let you know that I smell your scent all over my clothes after you hug me goodnight, that I breathe it in deeply and it intoxicates me.  I am supposed to hold all of this inside and act as if it is not like I swallowed the best secret in my life.  Because a woman, such as myself, must have plenty of  men that are crazy about me, why would someone like me be crazy about you?  Right?

Could it be that you light me up inside in a way that I’ve never known before?  Could it be that I love the way I look through your eyes?  Just the sound of your voice makes me feel calm and safe, warm and protected.  The strength of your arms wrapped around me makes me feel more like a woman than a thousand romantic songs sang to me night and day.  And when you look at me with that look, it is as if all space and time ceases to exist.  I stare at your face intensely, putting it to memory.  It’s as if I look at the sun too long, I can close my eyes tightly and I will still see it all day long.

But there’s always the masquerade.  The game that all the world says you have to play, where you are never supposed to know how much I enjoy you, think about you or long for you to touch me and to whisper the same to me.  Why must we play?  Why must we do all of this nonsensical pretending.  Tippy toes, tippy toes.  Don’t ever tread too heavily.  Sip, sip from the cup.  Never drink from the river together.

So we continue to play the parts in a life so small, so shallow and so pale.  Our fears and ignorance force us to deny the vastness of unexplored depth.  We sadly miss our chance to experience life as a magnificent onslaught of pulsating colors rushing through our veins at lightning speed, leaving our hearts racing and our bodies breathless and beautifully spent in the miracle of true connection, true intimacy, true love.

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