<note: this was not directly a DMT trip... It was a long journey of reliving parts of hundreds/thousands of DMT/shroom/LSD trips in flashback-like visuals while super stoned and listening to an amazing playlist. weed for whatever reasons now gives me full visual DMT-like flashbacks... broken brain perhaps. The visuals I had during this was of fractal re-living of all life events which left fingerprints on my heart. All the while feeling like 'DMT' itself was watching my trip -- as if it was an entity overjoyed that I have made this connection to what a human journey is and fascinated at seeing me wake up to the nature of what I am>
I am the Fingerprints on my Heart...
My heart is heavy with fingerprints. What are these fingerprints you ask? Well.... the first prints came from my parents... some of unconditional love... some of conditional love.. much love IF I behaved as demanded...the first shots fired in the war of being a human.
I learned I could create new fingerprints for myself. In kindergarten I saw an angel... blond hair, red velvet dress, black shoes, and a smile to melt a soul. I could never say out loud how beautiful her fingerprint so I just I added it to my heart. It is still there today when I can be still of mind enough to ignore the louder, screaming fingerprints.
Some fingerprints are love and pain. Another angel with flowing brown hair and perfectly missing front teeth like me... swinging from a tree and laughing... another fingerprint happily added. My turn to swing and laugh in the sunshine... From my high swing-perch, I looked down at this angel who was giggling with a friend and pointing at me. Did she see me as I saw her? Perfect? I will never know... she was too distracted by the fact I wasn't wearing any underwear and my baggy shorts didn't cover up my male bits.
Passing notes in class to a perfect dirty-blond dancer… her Michael Jackson moves at recess were the BEST! I don't even like that music but... It is time to share a fingerprint with another. My first note to her, simple. “Will you go with me”.. odd wording for “please be my girlfriend” but that was how kids rolled back then. Her smile handing me a note as we exited class said it all. I now had my first girlfriend! Five days later and five notes later, this amazing fingerprint ended as it began, with a note. "Let's just be friends."
As the years past... many new fingerprints stacked. Many amazing prints to add to my personal museum of self -- identity. I find it interesting how my memory jumped all the way from third grade to high school for the next deep imprint on my heart -- a stain glass fish.
Oh how I like the smart ones.... and red hair. daaaaamn.. that red hair! AP chemistry class, I took my assigned seat behind the most fiery redhead I will likely ever meet. So rare... natural red hair, fair milky-skin without freckles, and long permed hair down to the center of her back. I had to ask her name. When she turned and told me, all I could see is her big stained-glass fish pendant around her neck. I was in love. Anyone who was odd enough to wear a huge stain-glass fish to school was perfect. Her nickname to me would always be stained-glass.
Stained-glass and I were great friends. I loved her more than I ever admitted out loud because she had a boyfriend. A college boyfriend because both of their parents thought it was best if she went through highschool protected by having a college, devout Christian boyfriend who she was only allowed to see with family chaperons. Who says arranged marriage doesn’t happen in the US? This fingerprint was my secret. I learned to love without asking for what I really wanted. I learned how painful a fingerprint of unrequited love is...while also how purely I was capable of loving another.
Now to learn what requited love-of-a-lifetime felt like. Pale skin, dark-flowing permed hair, and HUGE perfect eyes. Oh the instant attraction…. Well this is awkward, she was my movie date’s best friend…. Now I get why my date asked me to bring one of my friends too to set them up. It was the next school year and long after meeting her that I was brave enough to ask the big-eyed beauty out. It took some persistence as she had recently gotten out of a toxic relationship. But I had plenty of patience as the prize was well worth it. This fingerprint was different. To love and be loved in return…. This was the fingerprint that I had been waiting for.
My young man’s heart was content for -- a long while. I married this amazing soul who was able and willing co-create fingerprints with me. We met at 15yo, dating through last couple years of high school, married at 18, first child together at 19 -- she was 20….. Crazy I know. But I had so much pride back then in finding such a perfect match. My young male ego was also fragile. It is hard to navigate fingerprints on hearts.
I wanted to be the only print on her heart for this life. She wanted to be the only print on mine. It is a painful journey to realize the impossibility of that desire. The very makeup of who and what I am is defined by each and every fingerprint. I learned how to love by my fingerprints. To love me is to love all of those fingerprints…. The angel in the velvet dress to the fiery redhead with a stained-glass fish. Their imprints on my heart ARE me. Yet my amazing wife and I strangled each other trying erase all the other prints… if we could just add one more print of ME maybe the others would fade… to hell whether of not the new fingerprints are love or pain… any print will do.
The number and weight of the fingerprints on my heart by my marriage could fill several books (and I relived every memory of it)... yet could also be summed up by the simple words -- love and pain. We moved mountains to make it work… brought three kids into this world together.. And crushed each other in ways that break people. We left so many fingerprints on each other’s heart that all others seemed to vanish.
It has been over two years since our divorce… and I have created new fingerprints yet struggle feeling that they are shallow ones. Until recently, I convinced myself that new ones just couldn’t compare to two and a half decades of stacked fingerprints of a best friend turned wife and mother to my children. And then…. In a glance… in a moment… my heart could feel again. Like a playful child who has been asleep too long waking up to a playground to conquer. Part of me wants to go back to sleep…. My heart can’t take any more heavy prints.
When my heart started to wake up after sleeping so long, it started re-filtering what it didn’t allow in fully at the time… an amazing 36 hour first date ending in a mid-day skinny-dip…. Tubing down a river with a gorgeous burner/musician who I will always love... A roller-skating date full of smiles and connection… spending a week on playa with a beautiful french artist I may never see again… snowboarding with an amazing person who I know loves me deeply and has been patient watching my heart struggle to wake up… being asked out on a date (a first) by woman I didn’t know even had an interest and going to a hippie-dance that turned into a new cherished hobby.
I’m not a kid anymore… sadly. Dating now is defined by terms like ‘baggage’ and ‘damaged goods’ and ‘drama’.... I have even found myself in the whacky world of polyamory so that my heavier fingerprints can heal... and so that I do not have to demand to be he only fingerprints on another and so that the fingerprints on my heart may coexist with finding comfort in another.
To know me… to really know me… is to see every single fingerprint -- both the painful and the joyous -- see the baggage and the drama and know that who I am today is a direct result of that journey. I think we all long for blank slate hearts without fingerprints to love us and only us… maybe this is the very definition of a fool’s errand. I was married for so long and the two of us had so very few fingerprints when we started all those years ago. Now dating anyone is to learn to love mountains of fingerprints…. That quirk you find so attractive.. Left there by a previous lover… that amazing person you found? Forged by all the scars stacked from the heavy fingerprints that crushed their heart.
We are all the fingerprints on our heart. Be kind to each other and accepting that you are not the first visitor to another heart… nor will you be the last. Strive to help lift hearts struggling to beat past the weight of it’s many heavy fingerprints. Tread carefully to make your fingerprints on others ones that you are proud of.