Are you one more person I need to protect
One more person from whom to hide
The real and the authentic
Me inside
Is the only thing you like about me
The only thing that we agree on
Or can you find a morsel of grace
To understand my song
If what I embrace in my thoughts and my mind
Is something you can't hug today
Do I just listen to when your passion speaks up
Or is there room for me to say
To say, to share of my discoveries
To explore the unknown with you
To maybe uncover together
What could be true
Is my need to hide just a feeling of fear
And thus denying your place as my friend
Is believing different, being different
Going to be the end
Maybe if I had been different when we met
You wouldn't have attracted yourself to me
Or maybe there was something else in me
That didn't threaten your identity
It has been a lonely world for me
To doubt what I believed
But it will be much lonelier
To doubt your love for me
I want to believe that I can be loved
For who I'm becoming to be
But more than that, I want you to know
That I'm okay with me
I'm okay with the journey I'm on
I'm just a bit insecure
Are you one more person I need to protect
I just need to be sure
I don't need to change you
Your passion is a beautiful thing
But I'm wondering if together
There may be a song that we still can sing
© Ruby Neumann
Poet's Note: Written March 26, 2021. I wrote this poem in the hot tub this morning. I was finally able to paint in verse that which has been plaguing me for years. As I have journeyed out from the house I spent most of my life dwelling in, I have felt a deep need to protect people in my life from what I envision is a collapsing house. Am I protecting them or their house? Is that house, a place in which I found comfort for many years, something I need to protect? I don't think so anymore, but I feel like in order to keep my relationships, I need to protect. So if I don't need to protect the house, am I needing to protect the people within the house. And if that is the feeling, what does that say of their strength, that they need me to hold up the trusses of their structure. I can't do that when I have chosen not to dwell in the house.
I need to let them as dwellers uphold their own house. If the house is strong enough to stand, they will continue to dwell inside, but when they find that they can't hold up the trusses, they can then decide if dwelling in the house is a wise thing to do.
Just reflecting on the emotion of the poem, the image of falling trusses came to me. I know that calling the poem "Falling Trusses" may distract the reader from the pain in me as someone who feels that she has to hide her real journey from people she loves in order to preserve the relationships. The pain is real, the pain is not for the house, it is for the people in the house. I can't bring them out, they must either stay and hold up their structure or walk out on their own accord. I just don't know if I can tell them that I have left my building. I don't know if I can show them the faulty construction that led to the collapse. I guess it is why I hide. But are the relationships real if that is how I perceive them? (And am I really hiding if I post poems like this on the internet? I guess it is the indirect approach… but so far it's not working)
I long for the authentic. I long for people to love me and like me regardless of my world view and my perspective on life. I long for myself not to fear honesty. I long for the day that I don't judge my friends and family based on their institution's creeds. I long for Love to find a way.
