coming into focus

There has been a shift of late, people who I have known for a while seem different.  Now, what are the chances that everyone I know has changed? Nil. Chances that I have changed? Not nil.

It is fascinating.  Sometimes it feels like an out of body experience. I am in a conversation and then suddenly I am seeing the other person very clearly and there is no way I can NOT see them.  But what I see, isn't what I thought it was.  It's more like an adjustment, as though my focus was out of whack.

I tend to want to see the good in people because I want to see the good, I want this person to be who I want them to be.  My image of them is better than the real thing.  It's as though I have made these people up in my imagination.  I've airbrushed them in many ways.

But these days, the airbrushing is disappearing.  Perhaps this is how I have treated myself in the past too.  I had an image of me.  The big difference is that my image of me was negative.
All I could see was the ugliness, the unwanted stuff.  As my vision cleared about myself, I can see things more clearly.

Some of the things I have seen have made me sad, but I tell myself it is better to see what IS really there than to continue making things up as I go along.  I didn't know I was blurring the lines about people.  I didn't want to see.

This clarity comes at a cost.  I don't have to do anything drastic but I need to see the truth.  I need to see where I am and what I am doing.  I think in order to grow and move on, I need to be clear where I have been.

I keep thinking I should be more disappointed, more sad but I am not.  Seeing people as they are is actually freeing.  I don't need to save them.  I don't need to fix them.  I don't need to stay small so they feel big.  They have choices.  I have choices.  I am not permanently attached, there is wiggle room.

I can stand among the people I know and be.  I too am not an airbrushed rendition.  I have flaws and I am no longer ashamed of it.  I feel worthy of who I am.  I feel safe to move on.  Seeing the truth gives me comfort.  My wooded path seems to be opening up to a clearing and I am grateful for the vision.