Nice View

The view from my apartment window is glorious if you ignore the weed dispensary and parking lot that precede the tree-line and sparkling glimpse of a snowcapped Mt. Hood beyond that. Sometimes I just take photos of the sky and clouds when I’m surrounded by grit and asphalt. You can find the beauty and softness in any given environment if you know where to look. Recently I found this old photo of myself enjoying the view at the top of Mt. Coot-tha in Australia when I was in my early 20s.

That was nearly 20 years ago, subtract a few years. Recently I went to a friend’s wedding in Vegas with my current partner. She lived across the street from my family in my hometown before I moved to Australia. It was good to see her, I felt like it put me back in touch with my younger self. A few friends from my old life were there.

It was kind of surreal to see all of us grown up. There was an element of sadness. We all seemed … tired. But it was bittersweet, nonetheless. “Megan”, my birth name, lives on in the minds of people who knew me back when. She’s mostly a good girl if not too much of a people pleaser. She wants to feel normal and accepted and she wants to love and be loved. She’s shy but she won’t show it unless she’s sober (which is rare).

She’s a goofball and a sweetheart and a brat and she means well but she doesn’t understand boundaries just yet. She’s likely undiagnosed autistic but not in the whiz kid kind of way. She wants to prove her worth, that she’s worthy of love. She wants to be an artist but she’s so afraid of failing. She doesn’t know that she is an artist and always has been. She doesn’t know that she’s worthy of love and always has been.

The times she was surrounded by softness she could only see sharp angles and hardness. She couldn’t see where the love and softness were, even when it was close by. And she was always running to the next big accomplishment, milestone or event. She didn’t know how beautiful she actually was as a person.

Many years later, I’ve seen some very dark times and I have experienced love, platonic and otherwise. I still struggle with accepting love, like really believing it when others try to love me. But at least I know where to look when I feel like I’m surrounded by sharp angles. Sometimes I have a hard time finding the love and softness within but I always find it eventually even if I can only look to the sky for it.