Gentle Armor

He called me intellectually exhausting. They’ve called me physically intimidating and spiritually overwhelming. I'm slowly starting to realize that those are not necessarily compliments, and that though said in awe and with smiles of genuine affection; they are really polite observations of the most obvious detriments to my character. It is as if the kink in the armor is the armor itself. It is because I choose to hide behind spirit and thought and flesh; things that in their purest form are supposed to be liquid and natural, that my attempts to control the mutable and free flowing, perverts them into something hard and garish; so that where I am peaceful, compromising, and accepting, I am also dogmatic, argumentative, and affected. It poses a unique challenge. How do I use Love to find Love when Love is not meant to be used?

How do I entwine myself with beauty and seek to imbue all aspects of my life with it, when Beauty by definition must be innate; and the manipulation of it only makes it less so? How do I let everyone know that I am brilliant, righteous, and talented, if I don’t take every opportunity to tell them so? It’s as if I'm always trying to prove something that I should already know to be true.

“Corey you know it to be true, don’t you? Or is that why you need a reminder tattooed down your arm? Is it such a deep seeded unconscious insecurity that it forces God to send so many to tell you to your face? Perhaps it is no coincidence that validation is constantly given. Is it because without it you wouldn’t know? Corey you do know, don’t you? Don’t you?”

He tells me that I'm Beautiful. They tell me that my thoughts leave them reeling, and that my spirit is a beaming bright violet white light that shines for all to see. But we hear what we want to hear . . . We believe the bad before the good . . . We unravel at the seams if a single thread is pulled . . . But my fringes have always been frayed. I’ve always been too fragile for my own good. I’ve always cared a bit too much – or at least that’s what I told myself as the lead consultant on my beautification campaign. So perhaps it’s time I drop the armor and let my thoughts become my own; let my faith become simply personal, and my body less maintained. That should make me less exhausting, less intimidating, and less likely to overwhelm. After all I just want to connect. I want to be Everyman. I want to be you, and let you be me for a time, because someone once told me that we were all one; which means we have the capacity to understand. That’s why I try so hard. But my attempts at being approachable and transparent get convoluted with high ideals. I need to have a quieter internal world, a more even mass appeal, and not so quickly bombard people with questions of Devine Design