The Moon Has Craters

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I Read It Three Times

I was reading A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson when I hit a paragraph and just stopped. Closed the book, looked at the ceiling, opened it again, read the same paragraph twice more. It's rare that a few lines make me feel caught. This one did.

"If the purpose of a relationship is for people to be healed, and healing can only occur when our wounds are revealed, then the ego confronts us with a terrible Catch-22. If I don't show myself, there can be no growth. Without growth, there will ultimately be boredom, which is death for the relationship. But if I do reveal myself honestly, then I might appear unattractive and my partner will leave."

Read that slowly. It's a trap with no clean exit, and almost everyone is standing inside it right now.

The Trap Has Two Doors

Door one: you hide. You show the good angles, the edited version, the person you wish you were. It works, for a while. Nobody leaves because nobody has anything to leave. But nobody gets close either, because you can't be loved for a person who isn't in the room. Then comes the slow part. Without anything real being exchanged, nothing grows, and a relationship with no growth doesn't stay peaceful. It goes quiet, and then it goes dead. Door two: you show yourself. The real fears, the ugly habits, the thing you've never told anyone. And now you're exposed, standing there waiting to find out if you just ended it. Hide and slowly die, or reveal and risk getting left. That's the Catch-22, and the ego is very good at convincing you door one is the safe one.

The Perfect Person Is A Smokescreen

The second half of the passage is the one that actually rearranged something in my head.

"The ego's narcissism has us waiting for the perfect person to appear. The Holy Spirit knows that the search for perfection in another is just a smokescreen that hides our need to develop the perfect within ourselves. And if there is a perfect person out there, which there isn't, would they date you?"

That last line is a punch to the stomach, and it's funny enough that you almost miss how hard it hits. Waiting for the perfect person feels like having standards. It feels mature, even. But look at what it actually does: it keeps you safe. As long as nobody measures up, nobody gets to see you up close. The search itself is the hiding place. I've circled this idea before without naming it. In The Last Chance to Speak I admitted I stayed silent for years, and that it wasn't really fear of rejection. I was afraid of shattering the beautiful illusion I'd built in my head. I was waiting for the perfect moment and the perfect words, and I wrote that perfect moments don't exist because we're imperfect beings. I read that as a timing problem back then. It was the same smokescreen. The imagined version of a person is flawless, because nothing real has ever touched it. The real one has craters, and the real one can say no. Staying in the daydream is safer, and it costs you the actual person. Perfection is a place to stand while you avoid committing to anything real.

Look at the cover of this post. A full moon over a rooftop, cherry blossoms reaching across it. The moon is the most beautiful thing in that sky and it is covered in craters. Nobody looks up and thinks, great moon, shame about the surface. The texture is the reason you look. Take away the scars and what's left is a flat, blank disc. The blossoms are the other half of it. They're delicate and fully exposed, and they open anyway, knowing they're temporary. And the roof underneath is the part I think the quote quietly points at: vulnerability needs shelter. You can only show your wounds somewhere you believe won't punish you for it. That's the job of a relationship, to be the roof. That's what flipped it for me. If healing happens through being seen, then the goal was never to find someone flawless enough to deserve my flaws. The goal is to become someone who can show them, and to build a place where the other person can too. What I'm taking from this:

Hiding isn't safety. It's a slower way of losing the thing you're protecting.
Perfect is a smokescreen. The search for it is usually a fear wearing a nice outfit.
The perfect person wouldn't pick you anyway. Which is oddly the best news in the whole paragraph.
Be the roof. Make it safe for someone else to be unfinished around you.

Your Turn

Think about the last time you edited yourself in front of someone you care about. What were you protecting? And what did the editing cost you? Then ask the harder one: who are you still waiting on, and what are they getting to avoid seeing in you? The moon never apologized for the craters. Neither should you.

The Moon Has Craters

I Read It Three Times

The Trap Has Two Doors

The Perfect Person Is A Smokescreen

The Moon Has Craters

Your Turn

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