backseat

every single person exists in the center of their own story. I think this is intimidating. I have an uncomplicated and -not that hard- kind of life. there are pieces that are frustrating, but I am very fortunate. I remember staring out the back window of my dads Mercedes station wagon (forest green, light tan seats with an odd amount of perforations) and I couldn't believe every car that passed had a real human inside (or multiple!!) with lives and stories and sides to them I couldn't imagine.

It's weird to empathize with strangers before our own family or those closest to us. i can recognize my parents as individual and complex and layered with their own worries and victories and lives that have nothing to do with me! its hard to see your friend as the center of their own world, because you see them as a part of yours. Their compliments don't mean as much because of course your parents or your friends that you've spent the most time with and found u crying in the corner when u didn't think u cry harder but then they sit down and u do. these friends- it's harder to take their praise and faith in you more. it means more (somehow) when someone who only knows the surface u gives you a surface compliment. they have a glimpse of who you are but not completely- and don't really care! Because remember- you are not their center, you are barely making the peripheries of their whirling world. so to those that give us a stage to stand on and time and space to think and feel within a relationship, thank you for the time and space and place to be because there's not much else to do when we keep centering ourselves in the front of the light, but I want to do a better job of making space for others as you step forward and I step back. A balance and in-between state teetering one and two, you go I go.