A Great Value Isn't Only Found On the Sugar Package

After coming to grips with the reality of my skin issues yesterday I thought it might be time to stop and ponder things a bit so I stretched out across the kitchen counter and took a rest on the cutting board. This seemed like a really grand idea at the time, with it being a bit warmer than the tile underneath my lower half, that is until I remembered what some people do with cutting boards and then I got a little bit nervous. 

I can recall, many younger years ago, hearing the old family men playing dominoes on our front porch while yakking away about who got sent to the chopping block this week and who got the ax last week. I never quite understood how they found anything such as gruesome as that funny, but laugh away they did, until the wee hours of the morning.  While they laughed I would watch her sleep, my sweet angel who loved me, in the peaceful calm of the early morning. As the symphony of crickets and night beings went about playing their songs the moonbeams danced across my fingers, and I would wonder just what those old men meant by those words. I would then pray I wouldn't be next. Now that I think about it, maybe I was. 


It seemed the longer I spent time laid back on this board the more I began to wonder about other things too. Especially after looking up and seeing the word 'value' glaring above my head on the bag of sugar. I wonder how one assigns value to something, to make it more important than any other thing? I wonder if it's because it's beautiful or pretty, and can catch their eye and hold it for eternity? But I also wonder if it's just because it brings them wealth, or fame, or simply delusions of grandeur that they buy into as if in a trance for life. I find myself thinking about these things a lot, especially in quiet moments like this, all peaceful and away from that dirt.

One might think it strange that something like me even gives ideas like that a second thought. I don't though. I don't find any coincidence in the fact that I was thrown away, on a burn pile, spent years buried and abandoned, and now I lay here surrounded by a new angel face. As time passed and the earth that engulfed me began to place layer upon layer of newly formed dirt upon my back, I watched everything around me slowly wither away, piece by piece, rust apart and eventually blow away with the wind.That was quite humbling and I knew being alone was something I would have to learn to live with.


And here I find myself today, in this wonderful new place, wondering if a face like mine, and for that matter, a body like mine, could be loved by anyone again. I see a new smile looking back at me, filled with laughter and care, and I get the sense that I am in the hands of someone who might understand what it means to value something like me, but I'm just not sure yet. I'm not sure of many things these days, except I made a promise to myself to survive, and I did, and for that my heart is full.


A little bird told me that I have a long road ahead in convincing lots of folks that I don't simply have a face only a momma could love, and that I too am valuable. I even get the sense that I am often thought of as creepy to some, which makes me a bit sad. That's alright really.  Even though I didn't choose to look like this, to have a blue face and some really whacked out bald patches on my head, I realize some people will only see me for what I look like, not for who I am. 

Maybe one day those perceptions of what beauty is might be thrown on a cutting board and chopped at until all that was left was a new understanding of true beauty, which for me goes way deeper than my ugly hair and skin that seems to be mangled up a bit.

Time to get off this block of wood now. I have a thing against termites and creepy crawlies ever since they took up residence centimeters from my face for the past few decades, and they have a thing for wood. Not to mention the thought of what some folks do with these cutting boards, like whacking them with knives and such. And some think I'm creepy? LOL


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