What I Couldn'T See

I would see her on holidays, three times a year. Yet I would not approach her, held back by this fear. Was it low self esteem, or inadequacy? I just knew she saw through who I pretended to be. And she finally reached out to me, more as a friend than an aunt, but my ignorance made me pretend that I cared, and I used her love so selfishly. Yet her heart was so big, and I finally see how it just didn't matter how messed up I was. She was never judgemental, she loved me because she had been where I'd been, she had cried the same tears. She had lost the same battles, and fought the same fears. In the end it was she though who'd finally won, giving up on the bottle, a new life begun. She found hope inside me that I could not see. She was living the truth that I would not believe. Some times I feel shameful that I did not cry on the day my mom called me to say that she'd died. I went to her funeral, not knowing why. Then I saw my Dad's tears, and it killed me inside; How somebody could love me so unselfishly, unconditionally, yet I could never see how I'd taken for granted the friendship she'd offered. With slow heavy steps, I walked up to her coffin. I know that she saw the tear fall from my eye as I kissed her cold forehead, and told her goodbye. Lies are like bricks, we can use them to build up a wall to surround us till we can see nothing at all but our ignorance, forced to perceive the whole world through through a veil of our selfish beliefs.