The Blue in my Eyes Was Always Mine 💙

My eyes turn a beautiful shade of blue when I’m completely myself.

Once upon a time, riding shotgun, my baby blues met your golden hue somewhere between 65 & you.

She noticed how blue my eyes became around her. Brighter. Lighter. Almost electric sometimes.

My baby blues.

“Only for you.”

That’s what my selfies would say when we were apart.

I was unapologetically in love, and I associated that blue with her.

And she let me.

That matters to me now.

Hers had this beautiful honey color with a shimmer of gold.

I knew I didn’t put it there.

She did.

I loved her through her growth. I supported it, encouraged it, and watched her become more herself. I never wanted credit for something she had to do herself.

I just loved her so wholly she might not have even noticed the difference.

But somehow, when it came to my own eyes, I believed differently.

I believed the blue was hers.

She let me believe it was hers.

Last Friday, I found out otherwise.

I snapped a selfie before a meeting and there they were.

Those beautiful baby blues staring right back at me.

What I believed back then wasn’t exactly wrong. She did bring something out in me.

I just misunderstood what it was.

It wasn’t that another person somehow put the blue there.

I felt safe enough to be completely myself.

Soft. Laughing too loud. Weird. Not monitoring myself. Simply existing. My guard down.

Nothing monumental was happening.

I was just being me before a meeting.

And for a second, I think I saw more than my eyes.

I saw evidence.

All this healing I’ve been doing doesn’t always feel like healing while I’m in the middle of it.

The evidence is as ordinary as catching your own reflection and realizing you recognize the woman looking back at you.

And something I once believed another person brought out in me was staring back at me, still mine.

I don’t need to rewrite the old story to understand the new one.

There really was a time when my eyes turned baby blue somewhere between 65 & you.

That love mattered.

That version of me was real.

But she didn’t own the blue.

Neither did the relationship.

It was mine.

Just like her honey and gold belonged to her.

And knowing that doesn’t change what I promised.

Words are difficult, honey, but the hard conversations matter.

You were right.

I wasn’t ready.

But you were wrong about the rest.

My love is unconditional. That has never and will never change.

We are once in a lifetime. For me, anyway.

I took that to mean this lifetime. Till-death-do-us-part type stuff.

Apparently, we had very different definitions of waiting.

While I was moving forward and headed toward our future, you were underneath someone else, airing out all my dirty laundry and using my sacrifices as a lifeline to hand-feed your ego.

But baby, I ain’t dead.

I don’t have to take back a single word I meant in order to keep living.

I’m not auditioning for my old life. I didn’t audition for it the first time.

I’m not auditioning for a new one either.

I am no longer surviving, I am just living.

And now when those baby blues show up, I know exactly who they belong to.

Me. :)

I cannot adequately explain how proud that makes me.

Some people may look at all this very public rebuilding and think it’s one last desperate attempt to get her back.

That I would fake-heal on the internet hoping she’d see it and come home.

🙄

Y’all.

I would rather wake up in Madison Square Garden blindfolded, barefoot, and in the nude. The only way out? Walking across Legos that are on fire.

Because who are we kidding?

This is Southern Peanut. Never missing a flair for the dramatic.

Than ever be entangled with a person, place, or thing that makes me question where I belong, who I am, or what reality actually is.

I built a home worth returning to.

Me.

I can be soft here without wanting or needing my existence to be validated.

I can love without abandoning myself.

I can take up space without apologizing for it.

I am safe enough to be my own home.

And now I can dream about rebuilding the physical porch, then the walls it surrounds.

Not rebuilding what was.

Building what comes next.

And damn it, these baby blues never leave.

💙😊

Southern Peanut