"Long Term Potential"

I was trapped in a Hall of Mirrors 

You know the kind. A careful design where self-delusion is dressed to the 9’s. 

I was blind to the entry sign 

My hall of mirrors goes deep but also shallow like how I allowed myself to date a 51 year old Peter Pan type who slept on a mattress on his floor 

Because I told myself I was sick of dating men for their “long term potential” (even though I definitely believed myself to be a woman with "long term potential)"

In a plot twist, I fell for floor mattress boy.

But then he left like a ghost in the night.

and my Hall of Mirrors shattered right 

along with my definition of what “long term potential” even means 

Because while he forgot I existed, I sat alone on a curb begging some Santa Claus god to bring him back 

And I felt hunted by a deep knowing that I was running from something 

and it wouldn’t be until a few weeks later when i decided to read some books that were sitting on my shelf  (instead of waiting for them to magically download into my brain which was how I think I thought they were gonna get there) 

that I discovered i’d been running from

Freedom.

It hit me that true Freedom is actually paralyzing.

A burden to hold all alone.

Avoiding it made me irrational.

A swinging pendulum inside the hall of mirrors where I lived. 

Dipping mindlessly from one reckless whim to the next. 

Always inserting a certain type of control and agenda 

Pretending to be a victim of…

Fate. 

I bet these are things that those who have lived irrationally will understand 

so then I read about rationality from another one of those books 

and I discovered the most rational thing I could do is give myself 

Unconditional self acceptance.

so now I have unconditional self acceptance which is different from self esteem or self worth which I can explain later but right now I’ll say that this epiphany led me to decide to use my freedom 

wisely 

and I thought that maybe I should start making art 

Instead of compulsively cleaning my house and working on spreadsheets 

and I still am looking for what I can do with the art thing 

but for now I just keep practicing 

being. seen. 

which involves getting past my own ego enough to listen to criticism and be new at things and now I live in reality as it is instead of a hall of mirrors because while I sat 

on that curb I realized 

that some Santa Claus god isn’t going to bring back floor mattress boy 

or download books into my brain 

or make me good at art 

And now I can see that reality as it is is better than Santa Claus anyway because 

Not getting what I want 

has given me a chance to see that making shitty art or being a fool or getting ghosted isn’t going to kill me but resisting reality as it is might kill me 

because it makes me ignore the burden of freedom and forget my smallness against the immensity of reality and it makes me buy into bull shit like “long term potential”