Finding Yourself

What do you see when you see me?
Because when I see you...

I see someone trying so hard
To let down their guard
Only long enough for me to catch
A glimpse of that match that'll scratch
Your surface and leave you charred.

I see the one who is hiding, subsiding.
I see you who is disengaged and upstaged.

I feel it swirling all around me...
The hate, the weight
While you debate and create this dictate
That we all get in line for.

I sense the quake and the ache
While you break and mistake me for
One of these stooges, you confuse us for.

What do you see when you see me?
Or are you really seeing me at all?

There is more to me than this.
This facade that no prod, no act of God
Could ever erase the face of my disgrace.

This bluff that, oddly enough, shows I'm tough
When, in reality, I cry and die, say goodbye,
Turn a blind eye to all those same sins you bury.

I am not my tears, cheers, or fears.
I am who I am when it appears
That I have put the world aside to bide and ride while I collide
Into the reality of what is left of me.

When I am left naked and exposed, completely disclosed
Then I am who I am... who I am at my best,
Not redressed on this quest while I wrest
The true test of my soul.

When I retreat inside and putting pride aside
I reside in fortitude and see gratitude
For the love I possess in this mess we call a world.

I recognize the revise of the script that is my life,
Not downplaying my heart so rife with my strife
Towards eternal life and all that it entails.

I observe the verve, nerve and swerve
It took to allow joy and peace to fleece and lease
That lot called my piece of the pie that is this world.

I dredge and acknowledge my pledge,
That cannot deny my longsuffering,
Amongst that which resounds, sounds and surrounds
I find still some kindness in my often mindless meanderings.

While I understand it's canned to reprimand me
To brand myself as valuable, stable, not able
To label myself as "good."

Yet there, through the mire, I aspire and find
Behind my stress is goodness, no less than
What my God has made me to be.

Through my faithfulness I am rewarded and afforded
A gentleness that embraces, encases, the laces
That, unstrung, reveal my discipline within while I begin again
To try and solve this riddle that is my soul.