Because the Iris, part two

because it has one foot out the door, and one tiptoeing in. it is between worlds, not sure if it wants to collapse upon itself or open its existence so wide it lets everything in. it stands as a metaphor for my navigation as a bisexual woman, straddling the line between the feminine and masculine, and not wanting to choose one over the other.
 
i can remember the first time i had a crush on a woman, when i was five years old, and the world no longer felt secure to me. i was a survivor of abuse, and here was this girl, i believe she was eight, and she was tender, and she held my hand. when we played house, she always pretended to be the husband, and would kiss me delicately on the lips. i leaned in because she made me feel good about my body and who i was. she had hazel eyes. i am a sucker for hazel eyes.
 
my first girlfriend had such eyes. and the most beautiful smile i’ve ever seen. she was the personification of sunshine and grace. i have never felt as safe as when she would wrap her arms around me. it felt like i was embracing myself in powerful, necessary ways. her heart wrapped itself around my own like a wooly blanket in the deepest freeze, and it protected me from myself: self-doubt, self-image, imaginings, and neuroses. she was so good for me, too good, and in the end i buckled to pressure around me that whispered she wasn’t really what i wanted or needed. except she was. everything and that much more.
 
it was so hard to accept this part of myself for so long. hiding in shame that i felt these longings, not consistently, but in waves. i was curious about the female form but afraid to peek, afraid of my own body, deeply frightened that i was irretrievably broken in a way that was out of the natural bounds. i hated that i would imagine myself with girls, and that it felt so wrong and sinful to do so. i despised that when i finally saw those fantasies spring to life through her, that i let all the self-doubt do me in, and that i broke her heart into chunks and pieces, and with it mine. it has never quite fit back together the same.
 
like the iris, I live betwixt, one foot across the threshold, the other already outside its frame. never will the two meet. i have grown to enjoy a certain peace despite the tug and pull. there is a gentle sweetness knowing that i fall for a human, not just the physical accoutrement that delegates them as x or y. there is a silence in my heart and a quiet in my soul that i am exactly who i should be, because that shame doesn’t live here anymore.  
Because the Iris, part one: http://hollybaldwin.weebly.com/reflections-of-an-unapologetic-badass/because-the-iris