You are all mine.

You didn’t know, huh? That you’re walking around, all you-y, but are really mine… well, that’s good and bad. Good that it hasn’t put a damper on your life in any way. Bad that I didn’t let you know sooner.

Because you ARE mine.

Not my possession, but something I treasure. Not apart of me, but a part of me. You can say that we’re all God’s children, or the universe expressing itself as humans, or whatever… I really don’t care what you call it. At this point, I just care to act like it.

I haven’t been good about showing it these past few years. I was wrapped up in school and work, so concerned with becoming that I forgot to just BE. I let negative feelings win, like anger at the stupidity and hatred that seemed to be taking over our public sphere and, for forgetting and failing to act and staying silent, I apologize.

I let the bad stuff win for far too long.

I should have been telling you regularly what you mean to me… that you have somewhere you belong, a place where you will – at the very least – find a listening ear and a curious mind that wants to understand… I could have, I should have said something sooner. And, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.

I know I should have been doing those things, because that’s what I needed all this time. I needed to know someone had me in their heart. I needed reminders that people care, are decent and thoughtful, can see beyond the veil of politics and garbage public discourse and into the humanity we all share…

I wrote about all this daily, attempting to intellectualize and philosophize and rationalize the ideas that I wanted people to see, hoping everyone would see beyond the words to my humanity. But, how can I expect anyone to understand when I don’t actually express myself?

I could see all these things, like how we are deceived into dividing by truly evil forces in our society, and I thought I could weaken those forces with similar bile. Only adding fuel to the fire.

I’ve always known that we are all connected in beautiful and often-overlooked ways. It’s a byproduct of growing up with the demographics I have. I knew those things existed, but I wasn’t owning them, being them, living in my truth… so how could I possibly have shared any of it?

I felt needy, utterly lacking… and, as such, thought I had nothing to give. How silly of me, thinking that I could get what I didn’t give… How utterly stupid and selfish.

I was too blinded by my pain to see that I had its cure, and one I could pass along. I felt empty and out-of-touch with myself – feelings I didn’t have much experience in dealing with… and it was all too much for awhile. There were days that I didn’t want to be alive, much less share my life or intersect with any others. I shut myself away, thus off from you. It was my own doing. As I do to me, I do to you. And vice versa.

Luckily, when I needed a blessing, one came. And in an unlikely (and unintended) form: a secondhand compliment from a cousin.

Talking about this and that, he made the pronouncement that, “Heather is ours.”

This is the kid (who is now taller than me) who would ask, when everyone was in town for family functions, to ride with me so that we could have confidential talks. This is the young adult who I’ve always been protective of, but careful not to smother; who I’ve always tried to love in an empowering way that respected his autonomy… who I just tried to be a good cousin, semi-friend, to…

And to know that something made the connection, that I had a place in some heart, somewhere… well, that made all the difference. Those three tiny words opened my eyes to the importance of making others OURS, of connecting ourselves to each other… because that can make a world of difference.