I can’t write about self worth, but maybe you can.
I can’t tell you what I see, even though you peer in my eyes.
I can’t tell you what I feel, even though you hold me tight trying to figure it out.
I can wonder though, if what I think self worth is; is how you define it. Maybe the definition you’ve created is YOUR answer. Because I can call you on the phone and talk to you about it with great clarity; but when I stand in the face of it I crumble.
I guess that’s what you see, and that’s what you feel…
The room in the air is suffocating, a light cloud of happiness entering a dark pool of thick black smoke. Slowly, the happiness that floated loftily gets drown beneath the heavy weight of the sadness. And every breath that is inhaled is grey, a former bright white mixed with jet black, and eventually what was once a happy person becomes full of sorrow.
The happiest of souls can fight a surrounding sadness, but they fight to no avail, because a happy person can only exhale enough happiness for themselves. They can share this breath with the world, but the others around them have to want to breathe it in, and more importantly they have to exhale their own happiness as well.
I was talking with a man the other day, and I told him simply, “this relationship isn’t healthy.”
His reply was, “there is no relationship that is healthy.” And then, since that clearly wasn’t enough, he added, “Define healthy.”
As if it was a question of opinion, rather than something I could read aloud in the Encyclopedia.
I didn’t answer him. Instead of speaking, I felt my heart begin to pound, and my breathing become labored. I felt the weight of the Earth pushing on my chest, but no words came out of my mouth.
“Healthy” is simply a breath of fresh air. A breath that starts in your mouth, radiates down your lungs, fills your chest, gives oxygen to your blood, makes your heart beat, and is expelled through your skin- causing it to glow. It’s a breath that is exhaled through your nose for the whole world to feel.
Healthy is being strong, not by brutal force, but mental strength. Like those stories you hear when a person falls from a mountain and they break all their bones, and yet they still manage to go for help, and survive.
Healthy people fight the greatest illness; ones that they don’t even realize consume others, like: anxiety, concern, confusion and uncertainty.
And in order to be healthy every person must save a space, deep within the core of their being, for self-respect. A healthy person will fight to the death to save it when it’s being taken away. “Healthy” does not know weakness, neither does it fall prey to it, because the healthy truly believe in themselves, and not just tell everyone else that.
And after some amount of stillness, loud enough to hush a symphony he simply said, “Your silence scares me.”
I could feel my pulse beating in my wrists as I shuddered at the realization of the truth. And so I looked at the man, and through his eyes I saw the pain and the fear that created the sadness.
I willed the words to come out, “What you see is me gasping for air. What you feel is the happiness overcome by sorrow. I’m dying, this is dying, and we are dying, because I can’t expel enough happiness for both of us.”
But the words continued to stay silenced as all the images of where we failed came to the forefront of my mind.
When the thumping of my heart calmed to a slow melodic rhythm, I finally spoke, “The definition of healthy is happiness, and happiness isn’t something I can create for you. Happiness isn’t a thing, and it’s definitely not a place.”
His eyes begged for clarification. So I continued on reaching for the explanation in a place of unformulated sentences, “Now, I feel different. Like savvier to the wise side of naive. Like when you know something has changed, and you’ve seen something in a different light and you can’t turn back. Like an imperfection in the perfect diamond. A thick yellow rope, pulled taut, slowly being frayed, one by one. And now what was once strong is weak. What was once healthy; is not well.”
And that man said nothing; instead he stared off in the distance. And after some amount of time that felt like one year, he began to run his fingers through his hair. He stood and walked close to me, and I let him. And then he wrapped his rough, calloused hands around mine and he leaned in and whispered, “I’ve made a mistake. And you’ve just taught me how to fix it.”
I found myself feeling more confused by his response, so once again I said nothing. But in that moment, when his lips pressed up against my cheek I felt the happiness that radiated deep down inside him, and I knew if there was one person who could make him happy, it was me. I guess this is what they mean when they say “in sickness and in health.”