A funny thing happened to me a few weeks ago, something that continues to this very moment. It seems I find myself naked to the world. Well, not exactly the world in the classic sense. But a specific world that is very important to me.
For the first time in as long as I can remember, I have been reduced to a pile of goo. Yes, this seemingly suave, debonair and articulate guy (hey, this is my story, I can be what I want), has been morphed into a guy who can’t string two words together, blushes at a moment’s notice, weeps uncontrollably during the last third of Finding Neverland, and has virtually no defenses whatsoever.
I can hear you saying right now, “What has happened to you?” What could possibly have laid you so bare that you would create a headline that says you’re “Stark Naked.”
Let me explain. For years now, all of my adult life in fact, I have had a wonderfully complex defense system in place. My heart had been broken several times at those critical moments in my life (yes, I’ve had some therapy on this) that caused me to build some pretty big walls to protect my fragile, shattered heart. The death of your brother and childhood idol can do that to a 14 year old boy. Add in a few other heart-wrenching events that I won’t recap here and you can understand why there were some pretty big walls to climb to reach me.
Sure, I was pretty good at faking the whole thing. I could go through the many motions of a seemingly wonderful, fulfilling relationship, only to have it crumble all around me down the road because it was built on a foundation that was somewhere between jello and quicksand (jellsand?). I would think I was in love, make classic changes in my life, become something I totally wasn’t, watch it self-destruct over time, and have all my friends say they saw it coming all along.
I don’t blame them. I was never totally in these relationships. Unknown to anyone, including myself, there was always a large part of me that was held in reserve, protecting that heart that had been broken so badly so many years ago.
I didn’t really know the extent of this or its impact until recently. You see, someone has finally broken through the walls and gave me a safe place to let my heart finally heal. Forgive me if I play a little catch up here, as I’m still trying to grapple with the fact that someone could manage to break through all those thick walls and rescue that fragile little boy’s heart that had been so carefully protected all these years.
I can’t tell you when it happened. Sure, I could point to a moment a month ago where I laid it all on the line and took the ultimate risk of pouring my heart out, not knowing what the response would be. But perhaps it happened earlier, neither one of us aware that my heart was slowly being opened and made available for the first time in my life.
How do I know? Ah, as anyone who knows me knows all too well, I can be terribly charming, charismatic, always know what to say, chameleon to the point that even I don’t know who I am, and be the perfect guy to nearly anyone except me.
At least I could be. If I was to try that now, I would be called on it. A very special someone has broken through and seen the real Robb. In the process, I have been reduced to raw emotions, so much so that I shake and quiver in her presence, I grapple for the words that once came so easily to me, I blush and struggle for the lyrics to a song I’ve performed hundreds of times when she is next to me, I realize that she perhaps knows me better than I do myself, and for some reason she still likes and loves me (and yes, she read the book).
I know. I’m surprised as much as you. I really got used to being that aloof Hurricane Pirate Guy, the one who always ended up on a dead end because he was too busy protecting his heart and trying to fit into a relationship box that was built on false hopes and promises from the get-go.
I don’t have a box to fit into anymore. I am just supposed to be me, which is both freeing and terrifying at the same time. This is the root cause of my lack of suave and debonairness. Nothing that has come before works. there are no expectations on her part except that I be authentically me and I don’t have to be something I’m really not. I’m not even allowed to fake it and say that I’ve always wanted to do or try something if it’s never crossed my mind before; I will be called on it.
I just have to be me. Small wonder I am so muddled in my messages, unable to use the lines that once came so easily to me, turn to humor when the moment gets a little heavy, or even turn to my ever present toolbox of nonsense and obliquetries when a moment gets rough.
There’s simply too much honesty and truth here for that. I won’t even make light of some moments that have been so intense, so raw, so amazing, that to do so would have cheapened them and reduced the gravity of their meaning.
I know my friends would expect me to turn to my usual lexicon of banalities, catch terms or cliche-ridden phrases to describe what’s gong on. In the past I would have gladly obliged. But there really are none here. Again, to use any term for this would lessen its meaning or cheapen what is really going on.
So I will simply let the moment speak for itself, without explanation to others, without my usual superlatives and attempts to explain the unexplainable. It just is. We simply are – one. It is marvelous, refreshing, honest to a fault and filled with a tremendous range of feelings that simply defy description.
It is us. And I wouldn’t have it any other way, for somewhere in that us I have found me.
In the Emerald City, loving life and loving my Kitty Kat,
– Robb