My Collection of Short Stories and Poetry

Wooden Floors

When you look at someone, all you see is what you do and don’t like about them. Their nose is too big for you, but they have impeccable eyeliner. Then you wonder how odd it is they have a great sense of fashion but they don’t have the body for whatever it is they’re wearing, then later when you think back on it, you feel like shit for judging someone when you have no room to.

The thing is, you don’t think about them outside what they allow you to see. They let you see them at their best, or their worst, as incredibly kind or intelligent or mean or idiotic. What it is, though, you don’t see them when they’re alone in their room. You don’t see the PJ’s they’ll wear for 5 days straight, messy bedhead, You don’t get to see the hour spent in the shower with tears streaming down their face or the makeup stained into their pillow. You don’t feel their loneliness or the pain of every breath in their lungs.

You never know that their parents yell insults, or their best friend has recently fought worse than ever with them. You don’t see that they were so heartbroken over someone they fall into a depression, deep and inescapable. You don’t get to experience their lives and their pain, you don’t get the privilege of being their 3 am phone call or the one they know they can fall back on when needed. Yes, I say privilege because that is exactly what it is. Not any random person gets an insight into such an intense and beautiful and horrible glimpse of reality. That other people have their own lives, they feel pain and love and they’re petty and sad and angry too. Humans, including you, are narcissistic and self-righteous creatures. There may be more behind closed doors than just another wooden floor.

What you should realize, is that none of us have room for judgment. No one is perfect. Perfection is in perception as they say, and besides....we are all connected in some way. I have a theory, that I did not know was believed by more people than just me. My theory is that people are connected in some, anyway; such as by knowing someone who knows someone, so on and so forth. We may be related to anyone and everyone, strangers, and friends, through blood, marriage, friendships, hatreds. We are all made up of flesh, blood, stardust, breath, water. Whatever it is, we’re all the same.

Now, I am saying “you” and “you” may be anyone. You’re [almost] certainly, a human. But what is your ethnicity? Heritage? Age? Gender or sexuality or name or beliefs? None of that matters, as what I am saying will apply to you no matter who “you” are. No matter where you live. No matter what you look like or do on Friday nights or watch on Netflix.

You are you and you are imperfect and perfect and amazing and terrible and petty and kind. You have good in your soul, even if it is buried deeply, it is there in you. You have a dark passenger along for the ride too, those “intrusive thoughts” that tell you to drop the baby, or swerve your tree into the car, or to throw more gasoline into the fire.

It is horrid, but it is all true. You are human, flawed and perfect. We are all connected, to other humans, and yes every living thing on Earth. Nature is alive inside of us too, as we are in her. I am not saying it is something you must accept, but it is definitely, and irrevocably, something to think about. Just remember, you are simply only you.