Sometimes, you’ll be looking at your life and the rose-colored glasses fall off. Maybe it’s a hot day and you’re sweaty, or maybe some asshole runs into you from behind and you stumble. Regardless, the glasses fall and they shatter on the concrete and you stand there shocked… exposed… raw… undeniably flawed.
None of us are perfect; logically, we know that is a fact. But emotionally, the moment when the blinders first come off shakes us, rattling us deep inside and making us question the things we hold as truth.
I am a good person.
I am a good friend.
I am on the right path.
And when we rattle things that were hidden – buried maybe – come loose and bubble to the surface and we have to face them again, unwelcome houseguests in an already crowded mind. We misstep, and as we do we remember similar steps we may have missed before. We remember the shame we felt. We remember letting those we love down. We remember failing.
I fucking hate failing. And I hate feeling like I let people down.
But in those moments that we fall, we define who we really are. You cannot know if you are strong unless you have a weight to carry. You cannot know if you are honest unless you have a difficult truth to tell. And you cannot know if you are loyal, until that loyalty is tested.
And sometimes the nasty, brittle, itchy truth is that we fuck up. We lie. We betray those that we love. Sometimes purposefully, sometimes not. Our sins become a fondue, melted together, a betrayal topped with a cherry lie.
But life moves forward anyways, and hopefully, we learn from those moments. Hopefully the people we love forgive us, and we forgive ourselves. And we move on, better, smarter, wiser… Hopefully, we find that line we will not cross – we define it, and in doing so, we define ourselves.
Because shit fucking happens and at the end of the day only you can choose who you wind up becoming. No matter what you see when those rose-colored glasses shatter, that choice is yours and yours alone.