5. wet clay
I used to see myself as a statue. I was firm, I was sturdy, I was stable, and I was colossal. I was something to look at. I was something that couldn’t be touched but could be admired endlessly. I was egoic. But I was fragile. Because when you’re a statue, sharp objects are a direct threat to your safety. A hammer could come in and shatter me into a thousand pieces with a few blows to the head. And that’s what love felt like. Love felt like a hammer coming in and taking chunks out of who I was. Love felt like sacrifice. In order to be loved, I had to give up the things about myself that were unlovable. To love someone, I had to give up the things that took time away from me loving them. Hobbies would be post-poned so that I could have more time to show up for my lover. I’d have to do things I didn’t like to do just so that I could be loved in return.
Love made me feel fragile. Love made me feel vulnerable. Love felt like a sharp object hitting the delicate surface of my mighty statue. And finding a partner felt like finding someone to hand the hammer to. I wasn’t willing to let anyone destroy my shape. I chose this shape. This shape was gifted to me. This shape has meaning, a higher purpose. How dare someone try to come in and turn me into something else? And the truth is, love comes at the hands of many and not just one other. Many had taken chunks out of me without me noticing. One day, I looked down at myself and saw all the cracks put there by the people I loved, by the people I thought loved me. I remembered every blow. I remembered who did what. I looked like the last standing statue in the middle of a battle field. A crime scene where each scar could be traced to someone I knew.
But love isn’t a hammer and I am not a statue. I am wet clay. And love is a fingerprint, leaving a one-of-a-kind mark on you. We are not fragile, rigid structures erected at birth and held to one standard of being our whole lives. We are soft and malleable works of art, revealing our shape with the passing of time. We are only put into the kiln and hardened into a statue when we die. Until then, we are shaped by the hands of our choosing. Our experiences mold us into the shapes and sizes that make us adaptable for what’s to come next. We are influenced by our surroundings but the core of us, the heart of us, always remains in tact, that we do not have to worry about.
People come into our lives and touch us in ways that make us more beautiful than we had thought previously possible. And people come into our lives and touch us in places we didn’t ask their fingers to go. Now we know their power is only as strong as a fingerprint in wet clay. With one smoothing stroke we can heal the parts of us left exposed and rutted by another’s touch. When we embrace the flexible yet durable nature of who we are, we don’t see others as threats to our being. Because we are delicate but we do not shatter at the wims of someone else’s thoughts.
We are the artists of our own lives. We are the ones continously molding ourselves into whatever we want to be and sometimes, a lot of times, it is with the help of another soul that we witness the transformational molding that occurs when true love is present.