Pitch of Honesty
A nice day for me to pitch it to him, hope with a future investor. My book wrapped up neat and tight with a bow, a perfect witness to my life, I wrote. The story is outside of myself now. Giving the audience no minced words or reason to deny my existence. I no longer needed to remember everything because it was written out. Now the world can know, if they want to.
He responds. The movement of sound. His words drifted into my ears, pierced through my flesh and into my soul. I sat there stunned and thrown off balance from the pitch of honesty. Unable to feel the floor beneath me... I was seen. In a light I wasn’t trying to be. Without consciously forcing myself. Naturally. Because what he said reflected that what I had been professing meant something. The manifesto I wrote had bearing and weight because I had just walked him through the thick of it. He acknowledged that the space I held in the world was physical, mental, spiritual.
Living now in the mind of this investor who spoke out as my witness and an advocate that what I felt was as real as a tumbling snow on the mountainside. Off came my defense like the start of a artic avalanche from an earthquake unintentionally and unnervingly. An entire layer of my muddy war paint I drew on with vindication decades ago began to slide off my face. I fell deeper inside myself like a black hole in the center of that park bench with a stranger, fighting to be heard so deeply that I realized I’d never conceived the reasons I needed to grieve in the first place. That’s what he was telling me. Whether that’s what he meant or not, that’s what it meant to me.
For days I stared off into the distance as the snow on the mountain top coasted downward. That was my life, my memoir, my natural disaster. From so far away it appeared majestic. Every word is represented by a powdering of snow. Each flake of winter sliding down rapidly. Still, appearing to descend slowly from the vantage point miles away and time removed.
In that park I began to feel the depth of the words I spoke. Of the places I’ve gone and the people that will be impacted by my existence. I’ve spent my whole life advocating for others and here I was on the receiving end of it. Acknowledged.
It shook me. It shook the snow down. An avalanche and soul elevation simultaneously.
As time does with moments coming and going I felt the investor creep back into himself.
“Whoever publishes this needs to be the most incredible person on the planet. And do I think I’m pretty incredible.”
With those sentences spoken out into existence, a fog filled the air in his ambiguous words while a lightbulb went off in my head. He thinks. Does this mean he cowers at greatness? Or is it a smoke screen to an easy exit from my extraordinary life. One that asks for greatness as a partnership.
So that’s why they always disembark on myself as new investment? I think to myself as the communication between us shifts from interesting, engaging, and provoking to flat, sterile, and unchallenging.
Previous investors in previous conversations looked at me through the sides of their eyes cautious as they spoke out a real fear. “So you are a writer… that means you will write about me.” A full statement. No question was asked. He knew. They knew. And what they ‘knew’ still beseeches me.
They kept their fear to themselves as they stepped backwards back into their homes they made for themselves. Without me. All the professions of being proud of me, amazed by my work, and unable to believe that such a kind person like me exists… gets muffled by my phone that no longer rings, walks that are no longer taken, and words that don’t add up to their final actions.
So in honor of the men who left me so I could be with better…. I’m happy to announce my blog to scare off more great men and maybe attract the incredible ;)
Because I am not done writing I may never stop talking about the “this” that is my life… But that's how I love. It's the love I want to surround me. Undying. Loyal. Firm. Friendships, family, and a partner unafraid of being tattled on by my keyboard. Let’s all come together and do nothing that provokes fear in being found out about. Let’s live in a way that offers grace and compassion from mistakes if the intentions are well.
Love for those who were here before, the few who stayed, and those to come.
If you missed it… my book is doing just fine. It really is just a love letter to myself that I made public anyways.
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