Inside My Prism

I think I have been living inside a prism.

A crystal formed slowly around me, layer after layer, until protection became something beautiful enough that nobody thought to ask what it was protecting.

Maybe I didn’t ask, either.

I called it achievement. Responsibility. Being someone people could count on. I learned to provide, to serve, to notice what needed doing before anyone had to ask.

Those things are real parts of me. I care. I want to help. There is love in what I give.

But there is fear in some of it, too.

The fear that being useful is how I keep my place. That getting it right might keep someone from getting angry. That if I can anticipate enough, accomplish enough, carry enough, maybe I can finally stop waiting for something to go wrong.

From the outside, that can look like success.

From the inside, it feels like scanning.

Everything.

The change in your voice halfway through a sentence. The expression that disappears before you explain it. The silence after I say something vulnerable. Who is comfortable. Who is disappointed. What I might have missed. What I need to fix.

I can be sitting perfectly still while somewhere inside me, every surface is catching light.

Every angle is being checked.

And I may look calm enough that you would never know.

That is what makes the prism so difficult to explain. It lets me see the world in Technicolor. A conversation arrives with shades of meaning, memories, possibilities, and feelings I cannot easily separate. There is beauty in that sensitivity. Music reaches places in me that ordinary language cannot. A small kindness can light up an entire day.

But a slight change in tone can fill the room, too.

Sometimes I notice something real.

Sometimes an old fear supplies the color.

From inside the prism, those can be painfully difficult to tell apart.

The crystal softens some of what comes toward me. It bends the light, gives me a little distance, makes things bearable enough to keep functioning.

It also bends what comes out.

My longing becomes generosity.

My fear becomes preparation.

My need to belong becomes another responsibility I volunteer to carry.

And my light pours into all those colors until people can see what I contribute more easily than they can see me.

They see the provider. The problem solver. The person who will find a way.

I wonder whether they can see the man who sometimes needs someone to sit beside him without needing anything.

I wonder whether I have let them.

Because I have helped build this arrangement. I have answered “I’m fine” while already searching for something useful to do. I have offered solutions when I needed comfort. I have hidden a need, then felt the loneliness of nobody knowing it was there.

That is something I need to own with compassion.

The prism grew around a person who needed protection. I can understand why I stayed inside it. I can also acknowledge what it costs me now.

Being needed can feel close enough to being loved that I forget to ask whether I feel known.

Being admired can make the loneliness harder to explain.

And being able to read a room does not mean I know how to rest in one.

I don’t want to lose my colors.

I love the part of me that notices beauty, cares deeply, creates, provides, and serves. I want those things to have room to become choices I can make freely, without silently negotiating for safety.

Maybe that begins with letting a need leave my mouth before I turn it into an accomplishment.

“I’m overwhelmed.”

“I don’t know what that silence means.”

“I could use some reassurance.”

“Can you stay with me for a minute?”

Small openings in something that has held its shape for a very long time.

I don’t need to shatter the crystal to prove I am healing. I need to discover where it can open. Where I can let someone come closer. Where light can reach me without my having to examine every angle first.

Because underneath the achievement, the providing, the serving, and all those beautiful colors—

I am here.

Still watching.

Still learning when I can stop.

And wanting to be seen.