the daffodil curse

Daffodil cream pie. 

Imagine that! 

Daffodil cream pie. 

Long for it. 

Sing of it. 

Eat it. 

The trap is sprung! 

Daffodil scream die. 

Imagine that. 

In a flowerbed beside his driveway, there stood a beautiful clump of daffodils. He had inherited them when his wife moved out during the divorce. She had planted them years before. Faithfully every February, they pushed up out of the ground and nodded their heads in favor of the new Spring. They were a mixture of singles and fancy doubles with a few jonquils in the clump to add a little drama. In their season, the daffodils stood nearly two feet tall. The clump was about that wide as well, and probably was due to be thinned and divided after this season. The blooms came on strong, and close to a dozen at a time.
Being the sole guardian and keeper of the daffodils now, he had found that they made wonderful bouquets to take to his girl. She loved them and appreciated him all the more because they were from his own yard. But then, suddenly and mysteriously, she had turned her affections away from him and there was no one to give the daffodils to. Stories have been told already about the devastation and trauma he experienced over the loss of her company and intimate conversation. But in the telling, the daffodils were at first overlooked. Now daffodils are hard to overlook for long, and these daffodils were engaged in a drama all their own.

During the first week after she left him, he could hardly bear to look at the clump of daffodils. He had picked all that were open or nearly so a few days before, and left them on her kitchen counter with a Hallmark card for her to find upon her return from work that evening. Now, a fresh set of buds were plump and ready to open. Whenever he saw them, a wave of bitter grief overtook him and he cursed them and spoke his heart to them as if they were responsible for this horrid tragedy. But gradually, he regained the composure of his heart and mind, and found a safe place to hold his sorrow. He had stopped looking at the clump of daffodils altogether.

Then one day, after more than two weeks had passed, he looked at the daffodil clump, and noticed that something was not right. The leaves and flower stalks were vigorous and vibrant and strong. Exactly a dozen buds remained on the stalks. But all of them were withered and shriveled. Not a single one had opened. As he looked carefully, he realized that these were the same buds that had looked so plump and full of life two weeks before. No daffodil had opened and reached maturity in the entire clump since he had cursed them so vehemently for their role in his heartbreak. In disbelief, he glanced around his and his neighbors’ front yards, and all the other daffodils were doing fine. They continued to bud and bloom vigorously. Another clump less than ten feet away was doing exceptionally well. He was dumbstruck! He had cursed the very life force of these delightful beauties in his careless agony.

How could he possibly have had such an impact? He was a modern man. There was surely some rational horticultural explanation for what had happened to the daffodils. But slowly, he realized that it didn’t matter whether or not science could answer the mystery. The daffodils were a parable. He had cursed the daffodils, and they had withered. During the days when he had those bitter, fateful encounters with the daffodils, he had been utterly vulnerable. His core was exposed, and his energy was intense and powerful. He had recognized this at the time. It had seemed that he was a volcano in full eruption, and he had been in awe of what was happening to him. Now he saw the potential of such deep openness and vulnerability to affect his world. Now he realized how gravely serious it is to vent such energy upon others, even upon simple beings such as the daffodils. And now, he was changed once again.

A deep reverence and awe crept over him as he slowly understood the meaning of what had happened. He had never grasped the wonder of his presence in the world. He had never felt the importance of being present to creation with compassion and sensitive care. He had not understood his own potential for blessing and cursing at such a vital level. His upbringing and experience had not taught him these things, even though the theology and philosophy of it had been encapsulated there. He had simply not seen anything, nor experienced any depth, that could reveal this to him.

The daffodils had been messengers—angels from a deeper layer of integrity in the fabric of being. They had spoken to him of love. They had shuddered with his pain and lost their own glory and joy. He hoped that he had done them no permanent harm. He blessed them now, and prayed that they would rise up in their glory next Spring.

the chasm

I wish that I could fall back into the womb. 

Simple peace and contentment without care. 

Ignorant bliss and quiet comfort 

Before birth's rude insurrection! 

And then, danger and fear and deep longing, 

Gentle nurture and safety and care 

But not enough to protect 

From monsters feeding on a fresh new heart. 

I wish that I could fall back into the tomb. 

Pain and sorrow lay dormant there 

And could not touch me 

Before the resurrection. 

But now, expansive and raw and electric, 

All new and sensitive and so very hard 

With edges sharp and unyielding, 

What is my life? 

It had been a week since their whirlwind romance had ended abruptly, and for him, without warning. He had experienced so much in the intervening week that he could scarcely conceive of it all. The flood of emotion had overwhelmed him thoroughly, and he had yielded himself completely to it. He was exhausted now, and eager to get on with living and hopefully moving closer to his true center than he had been in times past.

He had given himself up to the emotional torrent of the past week because he knew that it represented a distillation and culmination of many things that had been working in his heart for a very long time. He knew that not all that he was experiencing was simply about the loss of this wonderful, beautiful woman who complemented him so delightfully. He knew that it was that loss compounded and interwoven with a lifetime of loss and wounding and fear and anger that he had never been able to express adequately or experience freely until now.

Now he was exhausted, and needed desperately to rest. He would give anything to let the emotions go and just move in the clarity of his mind and the simplicity of plans and activities and tasks. But he knew that this would not happen instantaneously or easily. He knew there would be ebb and flow to the process. He knew that he would have many more bouts of turmoil and sorrow over this thing, and that layers from his past were now exposed and raw and waiting for more work to be done. He wanted rest, but he was reluctant to shy away from the exposure and vulnerability he had so newly discovered for fear that he might lose it. His transformation was so bittersweet right now—so dangerous and painful and uncertain, and yet so promising—so exhausting and hard, and yet so rich and full.

He had no way to know what lay ahead. Would the next turn bring relief? Greater sorrow? Fuller expressions of rage and anger? A deeper encounter with the darkest fears of his deep soul? Eternal joy and contentment? Or perhaps some mysterious blending of all of these things?

He felt as though all the hardship and misery and turmoil of the past eight years—no, of his entire life—had converged upon the past week. Now he was in a unique position to shift his heart, his patterns of behavior and thinking, his expectations for himself and others, his very core. This shift had energy and direction all its own, apart from his conscious intentions, and would have its way with him. He was excited and hopeful. This lost love had opened up a crevasse that ran straight to the center of his being. Now there was movement and shifting and upheaval like he had never before experienced. All the remarkable and transforming experiences of which he had written over the past year and a half had been preparations for this moment. Now he stood on the edge of this great chasm that had opened up into the interior of his soul, and without hesitation, he dove headlong into the great expanse of it.

the beast

The dream was intense. Whenever he thought about it, his skin crawled and he shuddered with deep icy chills of dread. He had dreamed the dream months ago, and had not thought of it again until today, when he realized that he had felt the full force of its monster’s fury earlier in the week.

The dream was set in a long, wide corridor. The corridor was full of people, and there was a wide double door at the end of it. The people were milling about aimlessly until suddenly the doors opened and a frantic crowd pressed into the corridor from the other side. They were panicked about something and trying desperately to get away from whatever it was. The panic instantly spread to the people already in the corridor, and everyone was scrambling to escape into some other undefined space away from the doors. almost everyone managed to get out of the corridor, except one person who fell and was injured in the stampede to escape. Another person tried to help him up, but the threat from beyond the door was pressing closer and he finally gave up his efforts to save his friend and fled away. The injured person lay perfectly still on the floor of the corridor in hope not to be noticed by the thing when it arrived. He had no other choice or hope since he could not get away and there was no better way to hide.

Suddenly, a dark monster burst into the corridor from behind the doors. It was black and opaque and seemed to absorb any light that shown on it, not reflecting from its surface at all. It had the rough shape of a man, with crude, incompletely formed features. It had mitten hands and feet, and its head was a stubby lump protruding from its shoulders.It had no facial features except dimly glowing red eyes. It burst into the corridor, obviously engrossed in seeking out prey to attack. It was energetic and furious, and frustrated that all the potential victims had disappeared from the corridor. It lumbered along the corridor, and nearly missed seeing the injured person on the floor. As it passed him by, it paused to notice him.

Then suddenly, it reached down and swiped at its victim with the fury of its black dark rage. In that one swift movement the victim was picked from the ground and slammed against the wall with such force that his silhouette was impressed deeply into the wall. The victim was utterly traumatized, but still alive and not physically injured. He slowly slid down out of the human-shaped impression he had left in the wall, and lay crumpled on the floor as the monster went on to seek out his next victim. There would be a next victim.

Now, months after he had forgotten the dream, it was alive and dreadful. The dark beast seemed to be a premonition of the onslaught he was enduring. He felt as though he had been slammed so hard into the wall by the loss of love that he must surely have left his impression there. He knew that his own dark fear of abandonment, and a deep unspoken rage were at the core of his heartbreak, and he knew that the monster had come to claim him now.

Having seen the beast, having felt its fury full force, he knew that it was him. He also knew that he had kept it locked away and was now finally confronting it head on. He had felt the fear and dread of it, but had not allowed its wrath to boil to the surface. He knew it was coming soon.

Friday morning began easily. The tide of tumultuous emotions was in ebb, and he decided to make a brief appearance at work. He got into the shower to freshen up and make himself presentable to appear in public. As he stood in the hot stream of water, a small current of anger began to surge up. It was undirected. It had no target or objective other than to be released. It was small at first, and he welcomed it, knowing that anger was the emotion he suppressed and feared most. As he gave this anger space to work, it grew. Soon, it was boiling, and still grew.

He stood with his back to the water as rage overtook him. He began to be frightened of the intensity of this thing that continued to surge and build to levels he had never known. His upper body and arms and neck and face took on an intensity of energy and pressure that caused him to literally fear that he might explode. He resisted the temptation to try to shut this thing down. He had longed for the freedom to tap into his anger for many years, and had never successfully done so at a deep level. Here it was, the beast he dreaded most, and he lived to tell of it.

alone at last

As Wednesday wore long, he began to realize that the intensity and fury of his pain was bigger than the relationship that was ending. He had spent his entire life in dread of and aversion to being alone. He had always pursued love to hide from loneliness. Ironically, he had endured a hell of isolation for the last seven years of his marriage in sheer terror of being alone. He had always believed that he must engage Herculean strength to avoid loneliness at any cost. Now, for the first time, he saw that he did not know what love was. All he knew was the sense of relief and comfort he felt when a relationship was present to shield him from loneliness. All the warmth and tenderness and care he brought to a relationship were driven to this end.

He could not envision being without an intimate partner and happy at the same time. The two things seemed mutually exclusive, and in fact, always had been in his experience. He now saw that he had a gaping void in his heart, and that he had always relied on his partner to fill it in. He knew that somehow, he must heal and restore this damage in order to realize wholeness and love. Otherwise, he would continue to smother and engulf new partners with his need. He felt remorse and sorrow now for the relationships of his life, each of which had eventually succumbed to the inevitable collapse.

So now he turned to look within his heart. What was this horror of being alone? How deep did it go? Where were its roots? What must be done to heal it? Would the resulting wholeness be good enough? Could he trust it? As he pondered all these questions, he realized that he harbored a deep black fear that he could not at first articulate. He realized that this fear had pushed up and driven all the intensity of his turmoil since Sunday, but that he still had not faced it head-on. As he began to see this, his skin tingled and he grew cold. He was beginning to understand the place of physical sensations in deep emotional release, and so he accepted these sensations as markers for the movement of this deep dread closer to the surface of his feeling. He knew that it was the key to his loneliness, and he knew that it ran as deep and as far back as his life on Earth. Having tapped its energy this week, he knew that it was accessible. He knew that the door had opened, and that he dared not close it until the dark thing had been met face to face.

Thursday was a day of relative calm and reflection. The waves of emotion were smaller and further apart. He was now focused on his black, unspoken fear, and its connection to his current lost love. As the day passed, he began to see it clearly, and to understand why this loss was so devastating.

He had not worked for this relationship. It had come full blown with their first meeting. For the first time in his life, he was loved simply and clearly and without reservation or stipulation, and without any effort on his part to draw the love to him. He had trusted this love to be true, and knew even now, in the wreckage of its fulfillment, that it was. He had opened himself fully to it and laid down all of his defenses. And so, when she had made her fateful and inevitable decision to protect her heart from engulfment, he was hit full force with all the intensity and horror of his deepest fear—that he could never be loved freely and fully and without strings or controls. He had never challenged this fear before. He had always kept up his defenses. He had never entrusted himself to anyone, but had rather pressed for companionship as a close substitute.

Now he was alone at last with his loneliness. Now he was faced with the possibility that unconditional and nurturing love was not possible to sustain—that to be loved, he must scrap and fight to be worthy and to draw it to him, and that collapse was inevitable in any case. The collapse of this precious love had shaken his hope to its very core. It might very well be that the desire of his heart simply did not exist. This was the dark fear that had pressed up from his deepest being—that he was doomed to hunger and strive forever for a love that was impossible to sustain.

Now he had seen the black fear, and had given it a name. But he was certain that he had not slain it nor tamed it. He knew that he had just begun to meet this fear. He knew there was still work to come, and he didn’t know how to proceed. More importantly, he didn’t know the answer to the questions the fear raised. What is love? Can it be sustained freely and openly and honestly? Was he capable of it? Would anyone ever be fully present to him to give and receive it freely? He simply did not know. He was hopeful but unsure, shaken in his current experience.

As he pondered all of this, he began to sense a shift. He had always been urgent to fill his experience with intimate companionship. Even as he had seen this relationship crumbling around him he had desperately grasped at the possibilities for finding something to replace it soon. He simply could not bear the loneliness. But now, a change was happening. He did not feel loneliness. He was repulsed by the urgency he had always felt in the past. He must not engage anyone in intimate companionship until he had wrestled through his great dark fear. He felt a new peace and strength to go on—to wrestle the monster alone—to learn his place in the world—to be free. If the outcome of this shift eventually blossomed in love and intimacy with another, so be it. But he would not rush about seeking the numbing drug of intimate companionship in the mean time. He had a mission—a calling—he would be clear and strong and free.

the hurricane

Words lunged with fangs and claws! 

Pain turned on its heel and struck back, 

Crashing through fragile tenderness 

Already broken. 

Shards lay sharp and treacherous, 

Scattered across the floor 

Where tender hearts had once embraced, 

Not foreseeing catastrophe. 

The drive home from Visalia revealed no great insights. It went on far too long. He had formed a vision in his mind and heart for how to proceed with his love and his beloved. He just wanted to be home and to wait for her call. The road stood in his way, and he sped along, pushing the car, pushing the miles, pushing the law.

But as he pressed on, the road spoke to him with one small question. What if she did not want to be with him? That was the one possibility that his plan could not answer. He could boil oceans and move continents, but none of that would matter if she did not want him. This nagging question was clear and quiet in the back of his mind, and would not leave him alone. It crept into his hope and made him crazy with frustration and urgency to get home and talk to her. He had to know.

Finally, the drive was done. He checked the phone for messages and left a message for her that he had arrived and would like to talk as soon as she was ready. Then he got in the shower to freshen up in anticipation that he might see her today. After the shower, he checked e-mail on his computer, and there was her note.

It was a long note, and had been difficult for her to write. He knew this before he read the first word. As he began to read, he braced his heart for the worst, and it came. She had learned much about herself in the past year, and had begun to take good care of herself, learning how to be alone and comfortable with it for the first time ever. Then she had met him and he had utterly swept her off her feet. The whirlwind romance had been wonderful and powerful and idealistic beyond her dreams. But as time passed, she had begun to be swallowed up in it. She had begun to be smothered under the onslaught of his affection and nurture and care. She began to feel that her newfound self would be lost in him, and that was not a price she could pay. She had begun to relish the times when he was gone, and to arrange ways and reasons to be apart. Finally, as the opportunity to move to Colorado materialized, she made the choice to leave him to protect the precious self she had found.

As he read her letter, he grew numb. Here was the only attack against which he could not defend their love. He stood up and wandered aimlessly around the house for a few minutes, blank disbelief and horror mingled and tearing at his heart. Then, in a rush like none he had ever experienced in his entire life, grief and sorrow and loneliness and pain and rage rushed up and swept over him. He let it come unhindered, giving his voice and his lungs and every ounce of his being to it. For the rest of the day, the force of it was unabated. He had moments of relative calm, but the intensity of the waves of emotion that he was experiencing was so great that his arms and legs grew numb and cold as his energy was channelled so furiously away from his extremities and into this hurricane.

Whenever it seemed that he must stop to rest, another memory would well up and take him on to the next tidal wave of despair or pain or anger or compassion. Eventually he was able to call a trusted friend who knew his heart well. She came and spent the rest of the day with him, hearing his story, holding space around him for his broken heart to flounder in safely, and reassuring him that his body and heart would not be undone by the wrenching intensity of what he must endure.

He was exhausted from the ravages of finding himself deeply and utterly alone, and for the first time in two nights, he slept deeply. With morning came a relative calm. The storm of emotions was by no means over, but the fury of it was a little less intense. Now he could reflect a little in the moments between the waves. Now he could begin to examine what he was experiencing, and fill in a little with understanding.

He went to the Gavilan Cafe, and told Sandy and Mary Ann about the loss of his sweetheart, whom both had met, and they read his heartache and cared for him as well as they could over his breakfast. It was good to eat, and he was sure it would help to restore some of the weight he had lost since Sunday. Now it was Wednesday and he had only eaten twice. He went from the cafe to look at his bees, but the rain came hard and cold, and he could not open hives.

The day wore on into restlessness and urgency to find relief. Nothing helped. Distractions were only reminders, and activities were powerless to relieve. Loneliness and loss were his companions. They fed on everything he did. They walked in all his shadows. And even in the moments when a distraction seemed promising, he would turn away from it, knowing deeply that nothing must be allowed to interfere with his quest to heal this thing. He must continue on and face every moment as it came.

hope

On Sunday evening he had planned to go to see her. She called instead, and told him that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity had opened up for her to move back to Colorado and take the dream job she had always wanted. It would put her close to her kids, and get her out of the hard, dangerous business of horse training. She would take Reggie, her Arabian, with her. He couldn’t bring himself to grasp the impact of her words at first.

She had come to California to follow her dream three years ago, and to find year-round good weather to train horses. She had found good weather, and fragments of the dream, but she had unexpectedly found him too. In seven short weeks, they had explored a continent of joys and treasures together. He had opened up a world of love and tenderness and acceptance and passion for her that she had never known, and his attention and care had awakened the strength to choose this move. It was the first thing she had ever done entirely for herself. She had never believed in herself enough before. But he had believed in her with such energy and passion that she had found strength and clarity to choose herself and her life, in fact, her survival, for the first time ever. Ironically, the choice must separate them.

Now she was leaving, and could see no way to keep their relationship moving forward. She had agonized for over a week before she spoke to him, trying to come up with a solution. He could not leave his kids, with three years of high school left between them, and she must not pass this opportunity by. All she could see to do was to carefully pack their tender sweet love in a safe secret place and carry it with her. She must let him go. He must let her go.

As her words began to sink in, he was overwhelmed with grief and rage and deep longing. Now, for the third time, he had loved, and for the third time, his beloved had chosen a path away from him. She seemed utterly resolved to the path she must follow, and she had somehow decided that she could encapsulate the past seven weeks in a memory that would fulfill her need for love forever.

She spoke of this to him now:

“What we have together is perfect. It will always be there in our hearts, wherever we go, whatever we do. Nothing can change that or take it away. I will always love you, and will keep you with me. But I have to seal this off and hide it away to find the strength to go and do what is in my heart.”

He could not bring himself to accept the idea that they must sever their ongoing relationship to preserve their hearts and their love across the miles. They talked for hours that night, and wept into their phones, and argued and questioned and agonized still. Eventually, their hearts were weary and their words were exhausted, and they resolved to take a couple of days apart to let their minds and hearts settle around the implications and possibilities. She had entered the conversation with the resolve that no options were possible—that she must ride Reggie off into the sunset with her remembered love, never to open her heart to new love again. He had bucked hard against that notion and without knowing exactly how, was equally resolved to find a way, yet overwhelmed with a sense of doom and dread, knowing that she too must share his determination if it were to succeed.

He did not sleep that night, and was overwhelmed with waves of grief and anger. He wrote her a long e-mail note expressing his heart and his hope and his frustration. He told her what she meant to him and how he had begun to sense her troubled heart during the previous week. He told her that he could not bring himself to give up on their future. He told her how important hope had always been to him, and how it would not let him settle for a wonderful past, however good it had been.

He sent the note early Monday morning, and called his sister. She had been a trusted and valuable friend to him through all the trials and difficulties and transformations of the past few years, and she would help him clear his mind and heart. She invited him to come to see her in Visalia for a day or two. It was only a couple or three hours drive from Gilroy, and he knew it would help. He made a few phone calls to clear his schedule, threw a few things into a bag, and drove off to seek his path.

As always, driving cleared his head and settled his thoughts. He was a captive to the miles and the destination, and could do nothing but drive and think and feel. Parts of his brain that were dormant at other times seemed to awaken and surge into action whenever he drove. He could find no music in his collection that suited his mood, so he made the drive mostly in silence, trusting the rhyme of the road to settle his heart. It was the stuff that insight was made of. Driving was a treasured secret in the transforming of his life, and he knew that by the time he arrived in Visalia, something would come clear for him, and it did.

For seven years, he had held onto a poorly founded hope that his endurance and persistence could restore his marriage. He had weathered the raging storms, the lonely heartbreak, the hiding and lying to hold onto the pretense of the marriage, for the sake of the kids and for the hope itself. He had hoped without a shred of evidence that his hope could be fulfilled. He had loved and held on in the face of persistent unabated discouragement until finally he had laid the hope down to move on into honesty and wholeness.

For yet another year, he had held on to a passionate hope that his friendship with the moon’s little sister would blossom into romance. It didn’t, and her persistent, consistent determination to stay friends and be present with him had finally settled that hope and let him go.

In both of these cases, the foundation of his hope had been flawed and rooted in a love that was not shared. But now, he found hope springing up from a clear base of love shared. He was sure of her love. He was clear about her desire to have him in her heart, and her resolve to keep him there in spite of their impending separation. If a hope with no solid foundation had given him the strength to endure the hell of isolation and loneliness in his broken marriage for seven years, what could his hope endure now, with love shared and burning bright. Suddenly it was clear to him that he must fight for this love. He had felt that he was helpless to stop its crash against the inevitability of giving his beloved free rein to follow her calling. He had felt helpless to sustain love’s progress because she had seen her move, and her resignation as such an insurmountable and inevitable thing. She had seen the only possibility in treasuring their past and blocking out hope of a future for their love except in memory.

But she had not known him long enough to really know the fierce intensity and dogged determination that fueled hope in his heart. She had not seen the years of hopeless hope he had endured before. She had no way to know in these seven short weeks, how persistent and intense his loyalty and determination and commitment in hope had always been. She had no way to know how much more fuel their love had fed to his hope than his past loves had been able to. But he knew. He was intimately familiar with hope. He knew what force and energy it could propel with such a love at its core. He would not give up. He would fight for a love like this until his dying breath.

Now it became clear to him that this hope was different from the others. Before, he had loved and hoped doggedly for one who had not shared his love. Now, she was fully present in that love, and even though she could see no way to go on, he had reason and passion and clarity to push forward and drive his hope to reality. He would instill that hope in her as well. He would teach her to use her hope to push on and to achieve all of her dreams rather than pruning and trimming them to achieve only the most urgent parts. He would never let her give up this part of her dream any more than he could deny her the dream that was taking her away.

They would find a way to love across the miles. In time, they would find a way to reunite.

This clarity and insight and passion grew and solidified and gained legs to run. By the next morning, he had talked it through with his sister and worked it through in his heart, and there was nothing left to do but go back home and share it with the woman whom he loved. He did not yet know how the details of their ongoing relationship would play out. He did not know how she would respond to his new-found clarity and resolve. But he did know that he would not turn aside from loving her. He would not leave it locked in a box in his heart. He would love her fully and openly and actively to the ends of the earth. He would boil oceans. He would not give up.

And so, he packed his bag into the Honda and headed back home, eager to see what insights this drive would bring, and ready to face the challenges that lay ahead.

the tall people

Since the eighth grade, he had been on the shorter side of average. At five and a half feet, he was taller than some, but shorter than most of his male peers. As he grew older, he found that he was shorter than a growing number of women too. He had married a woman who was two inches taller than him. The moon’s sister was taller than him as well. Being mature and wise and very conscious of the immutable reality of his situation, he had never allowed himself to acknowledge just how much he wished he was taller, until one day the moon’s sister had pointed out to him that he was too short to be a good match for her romantically. It was a devastating blow. He had rallied his maturity and dignity against this simple, unavoidable fact all his life. But now it was out in the open—he was too short.

At some nearly conscious level, his shortness had always bothered him. He had known tall people who seemed to find their own sense of superiority in telling stories in which their tallness proved them better in one way or another than some hapless soul who, of course, was much shorter than them. These tall people seemed pathetic, and yet their stories secretly infuriated him, not just because they were so petty, but because in some dark corner of his heart, he believed them.

But when he met this woman, this earthy friend of horses, something changed. He was no longer short. He was perfect. He was taller than her by nearly six inches, and she never tired of marveling at what a “nice fit” he was for her. As weeks passed, he began to relax into the fit. He began to see himself differently. One day, he walked into a gas station to put money down to activate a pump. Standing in line in front of him was a man who was so tall that he nearly had to duck through the door of the gas station. As he stood beside the giant, he suddenly realized that he was not intimidated by his tallness. Standing next to this big guy, he felt entirely at ease. Tall was simply a novelty. As he became aware of this, he realized how very different it was from the way he had always felt before. Always, he had felt a twinge of inadequacy in the presence of tall people. He had never admitted it to himself, but it was true nonetheless. He had always imposed his standard of maturity on this irrational intimidation, shoving it back into some dark corner where it could not embarrass or harm. It was so unchangeable and childish. What good could come from dwelling on it? But now, the intimidation was gone. He was all right. This man’s tallness was not daunting at all.

As quickly as he recognized the shift in his perception toward his own height and the height of others, he also recognized the remarkable work that she had done in healing his heart of this thing. He was a good size—perfect for her—perfect for himself. For the first time in his life, he felt as though he was the right size. It was a revelation. It broke through distortions he had believed throughout his entire life. He was surprised at what a lightness this brought to him. Little had he understood the perverse weight of his unspoken obsession with height. It seemed silly to him now. Where had it come from? What had fed it? Why had he never seen through it before?