My Own Little Magic Circle, or, Becoming Real

The Magic Circle, 1886 - John William Waterhouse

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?" 

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

~The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams


The Awakening
by Anne Hill

If I touch you I will know you
Though my veil be drawn, you're glowing
In my mind and soul and body


I feel compelled to hide details and information about myself that I feel others wouldn't like, wouldn't care to know, couldn't accept or wouldn't understand. I generally err on the side of squishing myself in a little box of Acceptable Things You Can Know About Me...generally choose to make myself smaller, silent, bland and uncomfortable rather than risk making others upset, or unhappy, or uncomfortable.

Rooted

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“Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.”
~Anonymous~

ROOT

noun, often attributive: an underlying support

the essential core : heart

RADICAL

adjective: of, relating to, or proceeding from a root

noun: a root part

a basic principle: foundation

Learning to be in right relationship with myself has been (and continues to be) a very interesting process. Holding my relationship to self in the center of my life can be downright uncomfortable.

It takes more work than I expected to not abandon myself to whim and desire.

Thoughts on Intimacy

An adult view of intimacy:  knowing oneself deeply, and allowing interactions with others to have depth without letting oneself be reworked/refashioned through the lens of another's perceptions.

Maybe this is the only way we can truly be in relationship with another...we first have to be in right relationship with self.