Every new beginning

 

I do not come from this world.

     I come from a world of white and clean, not sterile but soft, with round edges and sweet smells. I knew a world existed outside of the womb like state I existed in, heard the bells ring and the dogs bark; heard doors slam and voices rise, but never did it cross the threshold into where I lived. I was a disinterested observer, gazing past the treetops to the sky, never feeling the rough bark under my skin.
      The day I was born from that world into this one came about the time I turned twenty-one. I stepped out from gentleness into bright, vivid splashes of color everywhere I looked. It was as blinding as it was beautiful, this thing called love.

     Falling in love for the first time, at least if you do it the way I did, is like jumping out a plane into a rainbow without a parachute. You know that you will probably break everything at the end, but the fall is so spectacular that you hardly think of anything else.  
     The tightness in your chest, the inability to breathe…the faster you fall the more intense every sensation gets. It is all bright red and orange and purple, a swirl of color and imaginings, like a Picasso lit on fire. After the flame burns down, the film that shields your eyes from seeing the world as it is burns away.
     In its place I found a new clarity, as well as a profound appreciation for the gentle web I was wrapped in, the sweet abode that taught me to value honesty and give to beggars, to seek the truth in every lie.  
     The world that I came from is not the one I live in now, and while I might yearn to go and crawl back to my philosophical safety blanket, I can’t. Instead I stand spattered with the red ink of heartache and the deep blue of regret, yet always looking for soft edges in a world of sharp corners, eyes wide open to the beauty of both worlds.