Hiding

What if I told you I was happy?  What if I told you that I found the man of my dreams and my fear of disappointing y’all led me to disappointing him far more often?  :taps computer screen: Yes I’m talking to you.  I’ll be honest, I’m not typically a happy person.  I have a happy personality such that I’m smiling 98% of the time but true happiness, the kind that comes your favorite dish waiting for you when you get home, is not something I exhale naturally.  I don’t often tell people what truly makes me happy. 

Did you know that dogs bury what’s most important to them?  Without realizing of course, that buried items often die and wither away with time, losing their color and the shine reaching for the sun beneath the dirt.  That’s what happened to my relationship.  I kept it hidden in the deepest parts of me like it was a secret among my ribs.  I almost felt guilty for loving someone that much.  I felt guilty for even being loved.  I felt like I was cheating on all of the heartbreak, the disappointment and the betrayal that I had written to you.  But I don’t blame you because it’s hard to tell when I’m smiling from the inside when I’m usually always smiling.  It’s hard to tell when I fall in love because I never tell what happens in between.  It’s like we talk, he’s cool, I love him.  I don’t generally disclose the secret hideaways and the breakfasts in bed.  I don’t talk about the forehead kisses or the interlocked fingers, the dinners made with love and the showers where two shadows collide.  I don’t naturally talk about the back breaking, the loud laughter, the swollen breasts, the broad back and the messy hair.  I don’t often preach the interlude of my own love.  But for most people, the moment between two songs where one ends and the other begins, feels like the music has been stopped.  How come no one ever told you that breath is music? The pause is the breath, the inhale, the exhale, the ‘let me take a moment just so you jot this down into your flesh, appropriately marked with “I was here.”’  I cherish the pauses.  I keep the secrets. I bury the happiness sometimes just so I know where to look for it when I need to go back there.  When the music stops, it doesn’t stop at all, it’s just demanding that you listen closer that you stop moving and hear the pulse, that you respect when the heart beats and you don’t mark it dead when it takes a moment to gather itself.

What if I told y’all I was happy?  And that heartbreak, betrayal and disappointment were foreign things that I never found in his bed.  What if I told you that happiness is not always just a smile?  That maybe my happiness was getting out of bed in the morning or maybe it was showing up to a job I hated because I knew that once I got off, I was headed to his house?  What if my happiness was the little things that you take for granted every day, so much so that even when you read my day to day life, you miss it anyway? 

What if I was happy and I gave it all up just to relate to you more, to love with you again, to cry with you in peace, to hold you in the dark?  What if I sacrificed my happiness with my angel to be amongst humans again?