Layers

“If we’re wrapping ourselves up to conceal any vulnerability, whatever happens to us has to go through all those extra layers. Sometimes love doesn’t even reach where we truly live.”

― Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence

“We live beneath many layers. Some are for our protection, and some are for our control.”

― Russell Eric Dobda

“In all, there were ten different types of clouds: cumulus, stratos, cumulonimbus, stratocumulus, nimbostratus, altocumulus, altostratus, cirrocumulus, cirrostratus, and cirrus – each with their own personality: fluffy, detached, transparent, thin, continuous, gray, heavy, dense, semi-transparent, and layered, which I use to describe my own moods and feelings at any given time.”

― Sia Figiel, FREELOVE

The weekend sunsets are ever-present in my life, and I have come to accept that I cannot escape my Saturday and Sunday afternoon clouds. These clouds are breathtakingly beautiful, but layered with melancholy.

I do not run from them anymore.

‘What a wonderful, happy day’, I think, as I drive back home. I bravely look up at the sky and take a picture, and I am (unexpectedly) confronted by the realization of my solitary state. The sky is a layered artwork with nuances of white, yellow, grey and blue – symbols of layered complications of my life. It moves, slowly changing into my mesmerizing, cruel reality: revealing those layers is as if peeling my heart like an onion. With each layer the beauty scratches at the back of my eyes. As the layers are peeled and reality revealed, my magnificent onion sky causes involuntary tears over which I have no control.

I did not choose this solitary, melancholy current state of my life; but I am strong and brave. These awe inspiring weekend sunsets usually precede the lonely dark moments at the onset of dusk. The clouds disappear when you close that door behind you, and you know deep down at the core that you do not have your own blood to share your sky with.

Peeling away the layers, I am confronted with the revelation of uncontrollable feelings of these revealing layers of my life, and the ever present pain in my heart. To ease the pain I wipe away the onion induced layered tears and precariously share my deepest secrets and feelings with complete strangers. I tease and chat and laugh and cry and offer my body to forget about the cruel reminders in the layered clouds of my weekend sky. I do not know what else to do, but allow the layers to be torn from my bleeding heart.

I foolishly offer the core of my soul to the brave being who will not shy away from peeling away the raw and cruel layers of my weak heart.