Inner Child

16 March 2006

Boy am I a project. Mind is blank but I feel like something is BANGING on the walls to get out. I know the screaming person in the closet. I know this terrified child.

I look in the mirror each morning and watch myself fall. I age, and I will look dignified, but I will still be a child. A small, scared face looks back at me every day. I have learned to love this child, but I know not how to bring him out, to heal him. I know his name, but his heart is a mystery.

Every day he tells me how he feels, and I know not how to listen. Though sometimes I allow him to react for me. Sometimes, it's easier, at least for the moment. Sometimes, I allow him to feel, because I do not know how.

He is a beautiful boy in a rust-colored knit sweater, with a lopsided smile, delicate cheekbones, an angled jaw, and thick blonde-brown hair. He smiles innocently and boldly and it is not a nice smile. But it is genuine. His eyes are eager to please, and eager to achieve. And for a while, he will do both. But it will cost him his innocence, his courage, his genuineness, his smile. It will cost him the ability to see what's before his eyes and name it. He will pay the rest of his life for what he has, and it will never be enough, and he'll never know why.

This boy is with me. He finally has someone to love him, even though I'm still figuring it all out. Gentleness, humor, love, and respect. And I, for one, will never leave him.