Dear, An-Other

What do you want? I’m convinced it’s the same things I want, but how do we come to the place where we try to get them in such different ways?

When did someone tell you this is how?

When did you start believing this was the way?

Like art on a wall, you are painted up and down. But so am I, dear, so am I. When it comes down to it, there is wall beneath that paint—for me, for you, and all of them.

Who paints your wall?

Who made that first stroke?

Do you see what I see—the beauty, the delight, and the deceit?

Why is it so clear to me but so blurred to you?

Well, I suppose it is hard for a wall to see itself unless there is a mirror. I’ll be your mirror. I don’t want to change anything, mostly because I can’t. But I promise you this, I will show you yourself and I will, if you let me, begin to paint. We may find that, stroke by stroke, the picture changes. 

When I look at you, I want to be able to tell the paint apart from the wall. These things that are part of you are, just that— a part. I dare not mistake them for the whole. Because if that was you then this would be me and I can already see that I am not the same, not at all. You didn’t know it but you were my mirror and you didn’t try to paint but somehow the picture has changed. It might be because I can see for the first time—my whole. It might be that I never understood there were so many strokes and that those were not really me.

Just knowing, changes everything.

So what do we do?

I’m painted and you're painted. Are we just collections of paint—of otherness?

Are we just agreeing to be flawed, misunderstood, and curious together? Maybe.

Are we agreeing to change the other's painting? Perhaps.

what if we aren’t agreeing to anything at all?

We will be changed, repainted, and remain flawed all the same. What if, in this process that only another can do, We come to see. Past the paint, past the misunderstanding, right to the wall. Your presence makes me aware of the wall. Isn’t that worth it?