Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but is it in the eye, or is it in the heart?

There is beauty in symmetry.

In a face or a flower.

Yet there are times where I look at muscles and glower. Haha

Is it not so much the perfection of one?

Or can it be the way that the sun

Hits the hair of a child while playing for fun.

Does beauty show itself more in vulnerability and love?

When the guard is down and truth bubbles above

The surface

What's below is what counts

You can have your countless filters and fraud

I’ll take an ounce

Of real ‘reality’

Even if its sadness

And even if its pain

There is the Golden Ratio

There's also the rain.

And mistakes and lessons and learning from ugly

I can be ugly. Can you?

Then what?

You move and you grow

From the rain and the sun

The yin and the yang

The dark and the light

What matters the most is

You don't give up the fight

To look for the beauty

No matter the time

Push through the discomfort

And you will be fine

Just train your eye

And you will see

That you can find beauty

In anything

I writhed in the driver seat of my car.  I kicked my legs straight and clenched my muscles trying to help them stretch.  The muscles itched.  My arm pits were wet, always.  The skin on my body was clammy.  It was everyday.  It was 70 degrees outside, but I had the heat all the way up.  I sat there shivering.  Writhing.  I pushed greasy hair out of my face.  I couldn’t take it.  I had done this too long.  Years.  It just kept getting worse.  I didn’t have anything left.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had gone home.  I couldn’t remember how many days it had been since I saw my daughter.  Had it been weeks?  I tried to push her out of my mind.  The guilt made it harder.  I couldn’t shake her face from my brain.  I whacked my head backwards, hard against the headrest.  Trying to shake the image of her away.  Trying to shake the guilt.  I kicked my legs again straight and clenched my muscles.  I did the same with my arms.  God they itched!  I reached down and pulled the lever and lowered the seat back so I was lying down.  I writhed around.  I circled my feet, then my hands, trying to make the itch go away.

I went limp and let out a cry of exasperation.  I couldn’t do it anymore.  I stared at the ceiling of my car.

Please.  Please God, help me.  I can’t do this anymore.  Please.  Just don’t let it be cops.

I couldn’t imagine kicking like this in jail.

Please, please help me.

I would cry if I could.

I believe this moment was my amazing grace.  I believe I surrendered at this moment.  A few weeks later I was hospitalized.  I was in the hospital for three months.  From there, I worked my way into the recovery community.

I’m now sober six years.

We're walking in the same parking lot. You are on your way into the grocery store. My eyes are on the ground. I'm looking for cigarette butts strangers threw that have something left to smoke. Your eyes shift on and off me hoping I don't ask you for anything. I try not to notice who around me is staring. I don't want to see their faces. I remove the top off the butt bucket by the entrance and sift through whats on the top. Anything too low is soggy from the rain. Or stale. There's needles, but they have caps. I grab a few butts and replace the top. I go to walk away. I hear you start to say, 'here, do you want a...'. Your wife grabs you and pulls you away. 'Don't TALK to her!' She hissed, appalled.

I peel my eyes off the ground and watch you both walk away. She's scolding you.

This moment. Is a different type of lonely.

Shame has a weight.

A different meaning to sad. Alone.

An alternate life. Parallel, but very far apart. Even though, we're walking in the same parking lot.