Look me in the eye,

Look me in the eye and tell me we aren't the same. That we aren't all the same. Your eyes are brown or hazel or grey or turn colours in the Fall or on cloudy days. Your eyelashes are darker or your skin is lighter. You're blind and colour blind and cross-eyed and near-sighted. But aren't we the same? We hear barking and think, "Dog!", and hate waking up on Monday morning, and think the smell of fresh baked cookies is Heavenly, and get songs stuck in our heads.



I've never walked in your shoes or been to your family dinner, but I know how hard it is some days. How difficult happiness is. How wonderful and extraordinary it can be. I know what hurts, and what pleases, and how hot sand can be. Can you look at me or any other individual and not feel connected to them? Not feel a natural bond and need to protect them and feel compassion? Empathy. Sympathy. Guilt. Responsibility. The bubble I thrive inside, my personal thoughts and experiences, they're not so different from yours. I too felt pressure. I know how scary it is to exist on your own. Once your protective figures throw you into the world and expect independence... as well as obedience. How hard you clung to your idols and role models and that individual who made you feel safe from the world. How it felt when that person abandoned you. Rejected you. Betrayed you. Never really cared.



That day it all came true, it could have been me. When he or she proposed and you felt as if your lungs would never recover, you lost all breath. I knew that ecstasy. I felt it when I heard the news. Or was it in the obituaries? Perhaps murder. Even suicide. I drew that last breath alongside you and my throat bled as we screamed. Just as the first breath of Earth's air in a newborn and how you looked into this alien's eyes. My heart sunk and reawakened each uncertain moment. That hand that held yours as you endured your trials. You swore and your god was there. I was overhead watching you embrace your translucent hallucination of hope. That night I dreamed a wish for you, something that will remain forever mine.



Those days we shared without ever knowing. When we blushed in horror at the bra shop, popped our first zit that left a scar next to the one you got from scratching your chicken pox, peeling your tattoo, having a breast removed, reduced, added, sized. The C-section you swore you'd never do over until 18 months later when you created life and watched a life fade in the same room.

Here is the lesson, here is the moral. Here we stop the judgments we have been fed and trained and forced. It's the restart, rebirth and if no one else, I will be the one to give it to you. Look Us in the eye and see yourself. Whatever you want to be.