See Me.

Shoes.
Shoes.
Shoes. 

The long glass wall separates me from a display of more than 100,000 shoes at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 

Men’s shoes and women’s shoes and children’s shoes and baby shoes. 

Everyday shoes and work shoes and formal shoes and boots and sandals and slippers and high-heeled shoes and orthopedic shoes. 

Woven sandals and wooden-soled shoes and leather shoes and cloth shoes. 

Shoes collected and preserved after the camp’s liberation in 1945 by Soviet forces. 

Each shoe a harrowing testament to a foot that once walked in it. 

A person who lived. A person who was murdered and, most assuredly, forgotten.

✧✧✧

I’m 20 years old and just back from a trip to Poland.

I buy primary color paints and turn my formerly-white sneakers into works inspired by Jackson Pollack, so that each shoe screams PLEASE SEE ME.

P – 🔴
L – 🔵
E – 🟢
A – 🟣
S – 🟠
E – 🩷

S – ❤️
E – 🩵
E – 💚

M – 💜
E – 💛

PLEASE SEE ME!

✧✧✧

I like to be seen.
I want to be seen.
I (feel a) need to be seen.

✧✧✧

I teach a four-point definition of love—S.A.U.R. 

Love =
S = seeing
A = accepting
U = understanding/empathy/sympathy
R = response

There is no love without feeling seen. 

Feeling seen for who we really are is life giving. 

Primal.

✧✧✧

We answer the question “How are you?” with pablum. 

There is no being seen in the words “Fine,” “Not too bad,” and “Alright.” 

I wonder what our lives might look like if we took the extra time to actually—and honestly—answer the question “How are you?”

We’d get a chance to see one another.

✧✧✧

Me, right now? 

How am I? 

Right now, as I type, part of me is proud, part of me is sad, part of me is hurried, part of me is curious if you’ll respond. 

I still have the shoes.