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Reflections on Identity
What I Am Seeing When I Am Watching
Looking out, to find out what is within
When I was married, I didn’t spend much time pondering the happenings around me. I diligently read two newspapers everyday, listened to podcasts and NPR, and voraciously read books, so I don’t mean that I didn’t worry about issues in my community or the world beyond it. It’s that I rarely sat still long enough to closely observe people around me, and if I did, chances were that I was silently judging them for something I was sure they were doing wrong. I wasn’t a petty, mean person, but I was a cautious and circumspect one who behaved according to the code I believed was one you signed in blood when you married and had children. There was decorum involved, and I took note of who did and did not follow it.
Three and a half years of introspection has made me turn on that prudent woman. My husband’s infidelity shattered me, and I continue to glue myself back together. I’m a crafty woman who owns not one but two hot glue guns, so I know that you can put broken pieces back together to create an illusion of wholeness, but that if you look closely, you will always see the cracked webs and almost imperceptible chips. There is beauty too in those imperfections, first knowing that someone cared enough to try to make the object whole again…
