Borrow the Eyes of Someone Who Loves You

Every now and then, I catch myself wondering where I've gone.

Not completely.

Just enough that I begin believing the smallest version of who I am.

The version made of old mistakes, quiet doubts, and all the stories fear likes to tell when it finds an empty room.

Those days are convincing.

Everything feels like evidence.

Every misstep becomes proof that I've always been too much, or not enough, depending on what my inner critic has decided to argue that morning.

Then, every now and then, someone who loves me looks up from across the room and smiles.

"There she is."

Three simple words.

Not because I had finally said the right thing.

Not because I had accomplished something remarkable.

Not because I had become someone new.

Just because, for a moment, the person they had always known quietly stepped back into the room.

I have come to believe that the people who love us carry versions of us that we sometimes misplace.

They remember the laugh we've forgotten.

The curiosity we buried beneath responsibility.

The softness we mistook for weakness.

The wonder we quietly traded for worry.

They remember us before we started measuring our worth by how productive we were, how useful we could be, or how carefully we could disappear into everyone else's expectations.

We spend so much of our lives looking at ourselves through the eyes of people who misunderstood us.

People who expected us to be smaller.

Quieter.

Easier.

After a while, it's easy to mistake those reflections for the truth.

But they never were.

Sometimes the clearest reflection of who you are isn't found in a mirror.

Sometimes it's found in the eyes of someone who has loved you long enough to recognize you, even when you've wandered a little ways from yourself.

If you lose sight of yourself...

Borrow the eyes of someone who loves you.

They may remember you...

before you do.