Me and my friend Walt

"My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs."

WW Song of Myself

Obvious to me, the connection between the lovely Mr. Walt Whitman and yours truly, for quite some time now. Brilliant in ways that I should hope to be, the man was able to vocalize what was internal, beat out of his chest what seemed incapable to unearth. As common among poets, he was a emptier. He would empty himself of thoughts, of creativity, of emotion...of functionality in an effort to rid himself of the heart that beat thump, thump, thumpity thump thump from within. I wonder if sometimes he emptied so much that he found it difficult to see himself clearly. If he ever looked at himself in the mirror of his secluded cabin only to be met by a blurry vision of the man that stood before the mirror...

My imperfections are evident. My flaws float to the surface, regularly, for each and all to see. Even when I attempt to gloss over the bumps in the road, fleeting seconds, and there they are in all their glory. I have stopped fighting the flaws because, well, quite frankly, it's damn exhausting. Of course, I strive to better myself but I have learned to hug tight those little annoying traits about myself because I'm a big collection of faults so why the hell not?

There's this one flaw, though, that I cannot seem to embrace. I cannot seem to get my short stubby arms wrapped tightly around this particular flaw. My hands won't clasp together behind its back, the way your hands clasp tightly when you love something so dearly that the thought of releasing it makes your stomach churn and burn up your throat. My inability to embrace this flaw comes from years of being bitten by it and listening to others warn me that its bite is as bone crushingly strong as its shrill bark.

My capacity to love.

And we're not talking about butterflies and rainbows kind of love. We're talking about the kind of love where I find myself crawling down into ditches that others have dug and begging them to begin slinging the dirt. It's innocent, really. My faith in others to change. I have not a clue where its birth place lies, except that its been with me since day one and it lives in the lowest place in my gut. That place deep in your person where that which creates the very fiber of your being nestles in for the long haul. It all sounds so gracious, so kind, so lovely. In reality, it's a bitch of epic proportions. The lectures, the "let me tell you something, Lizzy's," the "you'll learn when you get olders" they are the byproduct of this lovely vice I hold in my hands.

The funny thing is, I get it. I, contrary to how I may appear when faced with any conundrum of the technical variety, am a pretty smart one. At least, when it comes to introspection, I've got that ground covered two fold (probably three.) It's not that I don't see the error of my overly nurturing, worrisome ways. It's that I have no idea how the hell to go about changing the beast into a beauty.

How do you shut off a faucet when you can't see the dial? I don't know how to keep my arms from flinging open. And such, in the words of my friend Walt, is life...