Acceptance

Most of us forget that our lives are intangible. It's easy to forget when we're in our physical bodies and see things we can touch all around us. October is a month of anniversaries and illusions. The anniversary and illusion of my birth and the anniversary and illusion of my second father's death. It's also the illusion of nature's death. It appears to be dying, shedding its skin, but really it's just another stage. Another cycle before it begins a new life again.

A lot of things whisper to us, if we're willing to listen. Some we can't explain. Some we think we see. Some we only feel. The dance between truth and illusion is thin. I think both of them last, especially when you can see both. And sometimes it takes someone else's voice to remind us of what we already know.

When I'm not here, I'll still be with you. You won't see me, but you'll hear my voice and you'll feel my light. It won't be hard. Just wish, or don't wish. It doesn't matter because I can't leave. You might see me at night, the way you knew me. You and I might sit down and chat like old friends. We might walk together under these branches, sipping the nectar of orange-red tulips and watching the petals drop to the ground in random ribbons. Sometimes it's a garden, full of lushness and mountains we've already climbed in the distance. Sometimes it's arid and bare, overgrown with prickly weeds and nothing's pretty or manicured. But see the dandelions? Still yellow and bright? Showing their beauty in darkness? That's you and me.

Dandelions? Really? I can hear your words speak to me in breaths hidden in pockets of air. It isn't like you to question what I say. Where is the voice who admired everything and wrestled with sadness and tears when she thought I left. Your heart was heavy when you knew I was gone. But what you didn't know was that I never left. I was always inside you, waiting for you to wake up; waiting for you to see who you really were. You finding me - you thought it was an illusion. A vivid dream of chance that took you away from your pain. I was never the illusion. The illusion was what you wanted to see.

Now you see both. Truth and illusion. Truth is you stopped seeing me. You believed in what you could touch and what seemed real. But the illusion only seems real because what's underneath is truth. You could always see that about me. What was beneath my dream and why I dreamt what I dreamt. There are no excuses here, and if I hurt you, I hurt myself. Courage was my battle. I think yours was acceptance. Not of what you saw, but what you could have and who you could be. Potential isn't something we strive for, it isn't something "out there" we can't touch. It's here, always. We just have to learn how to see.

Courage. I talk about it a lot. I judge people for not having it. For not picking up everything and following your dreams, or your heart, or whatever it is that you want. But the thing is, you always had more courage than me. You never fell in love with shiny, pretend things. Or kept lying when the truth was so obviously unhidden.

She said once. I said once. We all have to have our dreams. But it’s nice to be here in reality. Reality can be the dream, too.