How I OD'd on Rose-Colored Glasses

Sometimes seeing the person that is actually standing in front of me – rather than the person I wish were there – feels like standing in the rain with a painting I spent my whole life perfecting, watching all the colors run down my legs and into the street. It is an experience of grief.

Many of us could use some exercise around reconciliation of humans, even though it can be excruciating.

I have always been a person who sees the light in others – and I actually love this about myself. But where I get into trouble is when I take only that light – you know, the best 10 seconds ever – and I extrapolate it into a whole person. It’s a form of fantasy, I know, born from some brilliant needs-must space from childhood.

But it turns out to be dangerous. Because even though I want to feel protected, special, immune to others’ bad behavior in relationships, it turns out that if I were seeing – rather than hoping or wanting – I would see that people are who they are: not just one thing.  Not only the sum of their 10 best seconds. They are, in fact, capable of critical and mean and abuse, they can abandon suddenly and completely, they can deeply lack the capacity or the willingness to care or to hold. Sometimes there’s no malice, and they are simply doing them.

For almost 12 years, I had an incredible dog named Tosha. She was chill and a delight, emotionally astute to the moods of her people, with fur that never failed to soothe. And then, she’d meet another dog she didn’t like, and she’d become a beast: vicious, drawing blood, going for the throat. And somehow, I could hold that all these versions of her were real, were all contained in that lithe herding body.

Why is that so hard with humans? What compels us to see fur but not the fangs? And whether I see or choose not to, those teeth are sharp when they connect.

What is possible as I stand here, looking into the brown puddle of paint that is reconciliation?

For a start, there’s no fresh despair time after fucking time, born of disbelief. I start believing in what is. There is space to step past the bleeding and learn to set better boundaries, to see things sooner – sometimes to bite back. There’s space for truth. There is space to feel less hurt.

There is space to let people be their own colors, their own palette.

There is potential for acceptance, for a new way to cultivate unconditional. To strengthen that part of my heart I don’t want to quiet, to see light and shadow both, and love anyway.

And there is also the invitation to say No, thank you. And walk away like a God damn cheetah, without taking it personally, and with my throat still intact.

Need some help seeing the picture of who is really standing in front of you? Let’s talk.