A Broken Path More Traveled By

His breath warmed the air around me, and I told him that brown eyes have not always been mesmerizing to me. Never have I, and never will I see blue summer skies and pastures complemented with bright daisies flowing within your eyes. Piano keys never tapped fascinating melodies as “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith played when you peered over at me.

No, I never saw beauty when you looked at me with admiration.

An autumn afternoon introduced adventure as we explored realms that were neither common nor significant for us. The soft engine rumbled and rocked me, and the power of a Mercedes Benz presented speed that whirled cool diversion through the car window and against my cheekbone. Exhaustion buried me down below natural altitude, and glorious contrasting natural hues blurred and faded into one standardized spiritual escape. I faltered between reality and fantasy as the twang and festivity of alternative country whistled to my stimulated relaxation.

Suddenly, something intriguing interrupted my controlled contentedness. My eyelids fluttered and soft tones of guitar faded into my environment. I was awake, but my mind was asleep as I rolled over to face you. Your rough hands slid back and forth on the steering wheel with every turn, and then I noticed you realize that you were being watched, that your presence was being consumed. You directed your deep brown eyes in my direction.

I was never more awake or alive than I was in that moment.

And no, my stomach didn’t flutter with butterflies and hearts didn’t sprout around me. My arms didn’t grow numb, and my fingers didn’t convert to restlessness.

There was nothing overwhelmingly breath-taking about you.

Still, I jolted with sentiment and my mind painted colors across your palms. Your eyes spoke to me across a lit coliseum, spewing divine rhetoric. Your eyes taught me to be cautious, and they taught me to be logical. They gave me equations and psychology and common sense. They drove the conceptual understanding of oxytocin and endorphins into my knowledge, and then they drove me to experience them.

For a moment, the wind stopped colliding into me as if you had threatened it to stay away.

It was then that I realized that I had an entire town lifting me up by my toes. I felt human presence flowing through my veins, partnering with my blood to keep me alive. I reached a dead end and I jumped, for a million hands connected at the bottom of the mountain to catch me. Now, when I was parched and starved, I felt pure spirit flow into me simply from the gaze of a friend. All around me were voices that would finish my sentence for me when I no longer hold the energy to finish it alone.

Human support coddled me, and I immersed myself in it.

No, brown eyes have not always been mesmerizing to me, but they were in that moment. And there was no other time when I felt that you were more magnificent.

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Now, I reflect that maybe feeling alone means that I make the choice to be alone. Around me, I see people that would edit my entire book, every continuous description and disturbing detail. I see people choosing me to ingrain myself in things that represent who they are as an individual, and I remain honored by this. I am being recognized every day for the small feats that I overcome, and I have chosen not to understand the true support that I gain from this appreciation. Now, I choose to understand.

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Look around you.

Are you also not holding the hands of those who guide you? When your path is broken and someone chooses to walk it with you, they are also struggling. They are not struggling because they have been thrown into demise; they are struggling because they danced willingly into it.

Negativity is not something that nags next to you; it survives within you, because you have created it. Asking someone to create beauty is selfish for you must first give them the paintbrushes to do so. Nothing is priceless, and I will always hope that the most poetic of things may only cost the world despair.

There is no sky that is bluer than one that replaces darkness.

So I ask you to breathe in hope, breathe out regret, and absorb inspiration. Reality crosses where fantasy awakens.

-Cassidy Uhl, Innovator and Generator of Change

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CassidyUhl