Human too

When did we stop seeing people as humans?

Did we actually ever start?

When we were young, our parents were superheroes!

I swore moms had a special DNA that caused them to never get sick so they could heal us with their snuggles while we had the flu.

Dads had these big crazy jobs!

Big offices with lots of random strangers that all knew his name! This big crazy job seemed so other worldy and so cool! It put food on the table and gave us a house that felt so big to a five year old who's whole world consisted of the cul-de-sac she played in.

Then you make friends. You create all these big dreams with them. You spend time on the playground with this girl you decide to call a sister. You both swear to forever, sometimes with cheaply engraved jewelry that writes, 'B.F.F.', all while daydreaming of your future weddings that you both believe you'll be the maid of honors at.

Then you start dating. The first boy we kiss is definitely the one! The butterflies in our stomach are confirmation of that... clearly. He's sweet and so dreamy! Yeah, we are young, but we know, he's our forever! I mean... he yells at us sometimes and I did catch him flirting with my friend... but it is true love! So pure! You only find it once!

I think I have heard it said that there is no pain like your first heartbreak. Even if it so juvenile and small, adults still take you in their arms and let you weep because they themselves remember the feeling oh so well. You carry that first heartbreak with you for the rest of your life, you can probably still remember their name and what the weather was like that day. Do we carry it with us for so long because that was our first moment we realized people were humans? That the boy who yelled wasn't our Prince Charming? And our first kiss at 15 wasn't our forever?

Or did we learn people were humans when that girl you claimed as a sister was far more sinister than you realized? That the friend you told everything to used it as the daily news for her other friend group. That she ran everyone's favorite gossip column at your expense. Maybe that was actually our first heartbreak.

Or was our first heartbreak our parents? As children I think we saw through some of the rips in the superhero costumes. Maybe it was the day mom got so sick she couldn't get out of bed and dad had to make dinner. Or when dad's job made him come home sad or angry. But as children, I don't know if our hearts were ready to be broken, so we covered our eyes to the human.

We waited until we were adults ourselves, working a cool job just like dad, but it actually wasn't so cool and the roof over our head and food on the table wasn't a superpower, it was survival. Then our hearts started to break when we saw mom cry more often. We hear of her childhood and see that her superhero ways were only a mask, hoping we would never see or feel the hurt she had.

And how many times did we forgive friends? Allowing gossip to continue and even joining in ourselves? How much 'drama' did we ensue, or how many"Oh, I don't talk to her anymore's" did we have? Until suddenly, every friend had only one chance to mess up, and our circles became smaller and smaller and sometimes, it left... just us.

And how many times did we try dating? Terrible boy after cheating guy? The mean ones, the ghosting ones, the absolutely psycho ones... And we swore we'd marry each one.

But heartbreak after heartbreak, we kept pushing on, until we did find the one. But then, oh no, he showed his human too...

What do we do?

Because for so long, human meant heartbreak. Human meant no superpowers. Human meant wrong.

But if human was wrong, why did we find ourselves so alone? And if human was bad, why did it come from some of those we loved most?

Could human be... good? Could human be normal? Bad? Sometimes. Wounded? For sure. Complex? Most definitely.

Was human just... human?

Could my spouse let me down and still be good? Could my friend hurt my feelings and that just be something we work through? Could my parents just be living this life for the first time too?

And could all of that... be okay?

And if so, what do we do when we find out

we are human too?