PAINTED CRACKS IN THE WALL

Photo from thatitaliangirl.blogspot.com

It is tying a scarf on your head to conceal your now undone hair. It is pairing a bright new t-shirt with old faded jeans. It is not raising your hands to hide your unshaven armpits. It is putting a table cloth over a worn out table or dressing your chairs with well decorated cloths to veil worn out cushions. It is wearing an ill-fitting bra over a beautiful blouse, tired inner wear over figure hugging jeans or torn boxers over a three piece suit. It is make up over a black eye, a broken heart behind a smile. Insinuated diet at 1 pm. Painted cracks in the wall.

Like government buildings that are painted afresh instead of repairs and replacements our lives are made of well disguised truths. Things you keep to yourself. Not everyone has to know. Dirty linen, they say and the embarrassing type.

It is no wonder we are all self conscious. Constantly on the defense. He smiled, approached, asked and now you are dating but he smiled because he liked what he saw. Your painted nails even though there is a slight chip at the corner of your left pinky, your sexy outfit even though there is a button missing around the belly button behind the huge belt and undone stitches patched together with luminous green thread that you would have to look intently to see. It was the only thread in the house. So you sit anxiously through your coffee date knowing that your perfect is anything but.

Have you ever complimented someone on their outfit and they thanked you in disbelief, as if they are asking "really, this outfit does it for you?" The wearer of the shoe knows where it pinches. They probably limp from their gate to the house at the end of the day due to the pain. But, they will never tell you. Walking across the street as if modeling Dolce and Gabanna designers.

The worst part is that we all know when it is time to let go of a pair of boxers, shoes, trousers, jeans, hairstyle even relationships and jobs that aren't doing it for us anymore; whose shell life has expired but where is the money? And, sometimes because we don't really see ourselves we think that it can go...one...more...mile.

Until that fateful day when...no one actually dies. Well, except you. A horrible social death. When you fall and the man you fancy hands you your shoe and he gets a glimpse of the hole, or you forget and take off your sweater revealing the gap the absent button has left or in your absentmindedness you raise your hand to wave allowing your wolverine armpits to air in the wind.

When that fateful day comes you will shave after the embarrassment...never before. You will look for a button and mend the hole or you will put all your worn out clothes and shoes in a paper bag in wait for the guy who takes them off your hands and gives you buckets in their place. But, by then it will be too late; the paint would have chipped and the crack exposed.

I pray that when you finally see the cracks on my wall you pardon me. Because, it is not possible for any one of us to go through life with out indecent exposure. So I ask that you pardon me, fight the temptation to think less of me, laugh in private, don't tell the rest of the world just Vatican City( the smallest state in the world) and lets never speak of the incident. EVER.