I’m participating in the January photography challenge over on the Middle Places blog, and today’s inspiration is ‘The Real You’. My mind started turning the phrase over and over wondering how best to capture the real me, and I realized something. One photograph can never capture the real me. Not really. It can hold a moment in time. One little moment. But I am so much more.
The picture I took shows a glimpse of me locked in a second of time. A one second click of the button. You can see my colorful hair although not the full vibrancy. You can see my new pajama top (the one I prefer to wear during the day instead) which shows my geeky love for Doctor Who. You see my eyeliner only makeup day. The ‘I feel like a dork taking selfies’ expression.
What you don’t see is layer upon layer of the real me. The one who hopes and dreams and sees the glass half full. The one who laughs when joy bubbles up. Or cries big fat tears, puffy faced and tripping snot, from the sheer agony life brings from time to time. The one who loves fiercely. The one who feels passionately…sometimes too much. The one who prefers to wear crazy fun socks…maybe with comfy slippers. Or the one who prefers to be barefoot. I’m a walking contradiction inside. The shy introvert extrovert in one body.
You don’t see the mind spinning a thousand different directions with so many ideas she just can’t contain them all…so they spill out in words both spoken and written. Or they flow out through creative artistic expressions. Or maybe they move me through dance and singing and playing music. Or sometimes it remains bottled inside until I feel I might explode like a volcanic rush of riotous molten lava mixed with heavy black ash covering everything in a suffocating blanket.
Sometimes I’m a beautiful wife my husband adores, and other times an evil shrew making him run for cover. Where does she come from anyway? Or I’m the patient mama loving and kind until the shrew comes back ugly and mean hurling words like weapons. I hurt for them in those moments. Regret. Shame. Guilt.
I am these and more. I am light and airy and love and peace mixed with dark and gritty and messy and dirty. I, the walking contradiction, am so much more than this one single snapshot in time. This is the real me. And still, it is only a glimpse…
Tell me about the real you.