In her eyes

July 2, 1980

Who am I? What am I? What am I worth?

According to Plato, the enlightened must return to the simple hills out of which they were bred, these caves, these hallowed bits of darkness, and they must teach.

But I am no teacher, just a man with many flaw, and promising makings of a future life, of some potential life.

I am sometimes a fool, seeing my own pain reflected in the eyes of others.

Does self importance come from that?

I suppose it does, that we maintain, even grow in what we see reflected back at us in other people, and we must read what those tattered looks mean.

What others think of us matters regardless of whether we wish to admit it or not.

Her thoughts matter.

But she hides her eyes behind her intellect, and leaves to guess what she thinks, and since I can’t see for myself, I have to take her word for it.

She is a bigger rebel than I am – defying not just her middle class upbringing and the kind of internal slavery women suffer, and so sometimes, I have an enemy and denied again even that sense of what I am to her in her eyes.

We need to build each other, but I have to earn every brick I lay, and I often stumble under the weigh of the chore.

I struggle not only with my own vast ignorance, but with her knowledge – and fear each time I make a mistake that it might be the last mistake I am allowed to make.

And all I really want to know is who I am and what I might become to myself, to her, and to the world itself, feeling now insignificant and unaccomplished, knowing that at some point, if I do see myself in her eyes, I might not like what I will see.