UNDERSTAND

"Run your fingers through my soul. For once, just once, feel exactly what I feel, believe what I believe, perceive as I perceive, look, experience, examine, and for once, just once…understand." ~Sara Ohotto

During the course of my time on AOL, I have varied the quotations I have used on my member profile. Each one has held a special significance that I can relate to easily. Not all of them pertain specifically to me or my life experiences, but the messages are powerful or are take-your-breath-away beautiful ones.

The quotation listed above is one I used for a very long time before I moved on to a new one. I recently edited my member profile and once again restored this beauty of a quote to it. Sometimes I think it should have been written by me, but I am incapable of writing with such passion and perfect expression.

How many times have all of us wished that others could climb into our beings and understand what it is like to be us? I know rare is the day that I do not wish for that to be possible.

Very, very few people have a solid grasp of who and how I am. People who can nod with at least a partial understanding of what makes me the person I am. No one, save my late father, has ever been able to see my complexities and commonalties and come away with a deeper appreciation of all that comprises me. People guess. People assume. They let their biases color their views. But, in doing so, they come no closer to discovering the me who is very real.

At times, I want to scream out in frustration. All I ask is to be recognized as who I genuinely am, not who someone wants me to be or expects me to be or thinks me to be.

I want to be able to read something that stuns me with its magnificence and have others understand why it has astounded me. To know firsthand why it has affected me so deeply.

I want my feelings to be felt and absorbed by others. Let them know the intensity of my pain and joy and love.

I want my beliefs to creep into others, so they can have a true understanding of all that has gone into the formation of those beliefs. The small and large bits of life coming together to create the philosophy by which I exist.

And, oh, for others to experience all I have would be grand. Yes, the oft enchanted life I have lived has been colorful and blessed, but it has not been without its hardships. There are many events that have shaped the woman I have become.

It would be sheer madness to wish for everyone to be exactly like me. Who wants a world filled with people of like minds? There would be no diversity to stir and inspire this melting pot of human beings.

No, all I want is but a few moments of people running their fingers through my soul and coming away with knowledge of who I am and why I am.