Quilled

My 'morning page', from this morning. My question when I went to bed last night was this: "Dear Universe, what perspective can I gain on the fact that when most of the others in my life, especially professionally, look at & interact with me, they persist in underestimating and diminishing me? How can I protect myself from allowing that attitude to penetrate my perceptions of myself?"

I woke up humming America's brilliant & lovely song, a longtime favorite of mine, 'A Horse With No Name' - do you remember this part of one verse:
"The ocean is a desert with its life underground
And a perfect disguise above ..."
Written by Dewey Bunnell, ©1971

My life is underground (personal), inside (private), disguised by the postures I take on most of the time, with most people, in order to walk through the professional and exterior rounds required of me. But that is NOT my reality. They are the ones being fooled, believing what they 'see'. And it leaves me free to go seek kindred souls without leaving any energy behind where it's not welcome or needed or even recognized. A page about suddenly finding myself on equal/peer footing with someone heretofore always elevated (by me), on a pedestal ... words follow Bob Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" melody, 'Mama take this crown away from me; I don't need it anymore.' All watch/time references because this transformation has taken almost two and a half decades, and then in one exchange I passed through it to equilibrium & literally, internally, saw the crown I had placed on this individual's head float off, grow more and more distant, then disappear.