off my knees: thoughts on the myths we make of love

what happens when we finally see people as they are

I came across these words recently—a fragment from Traci Brimhall's "Dear Eros" floating in isolation on my screen: "I worshipped the myth I made of you, but I'm off my knees now." Something in the stark honesty of this declaration stopped me in my tracks. How many myths had I crafted of others? How many pedestals had I built, only to discover I was bowing before my own creation? The line haunted me for days, demanding exploration. This piece is my attempt to untangle what happens in that precarious space between worship and disillusionment, between kneeling and finally rising to stand.

The space between worship and standing is vast. Between those moments—the genuflection before an altar of our own making and the quiet dignity of rising—lies the territory of disillusionment, that necessary fracturing that precedes all genuine sight.

We are, all of us, mythmakers by nature. We craft elaborate stories from fragments, constructing gods and goddesses from mere mortals. Perhaps it is our most fundamental act of creation—this transfiguration of the ordinary into something worthy of devotion. We take their silences and fill them with profound depths. We mistake their small kindnesses for extraordinary compassion. We transform their human contradictions into fascinating complexity rather than the simple incoherence that defines us all.

The myths begin innocently enough. A smile interpreted as divine favor. A casual touch infused with cosmic significance. When someone offers us even the faintest reflection of our deepest longings, how eagerly we mistake the mirror for the source of light.

To worship is to surrender the critical eye. It is to offer up our discernment on the altar of desire, to sacrifice the gift of clear sight for the intoxication of reverence. When we worship another, we engage in a peculiar form of blindness—one that does not prevent seeing but rather transforms what is seen. Flaws become endearing quirks; ordinary talents shine as rare genius; common decency passes for extraordinary moral fiber.

This is the craftsmanship of the heart—spinning the rough yarn of reality into gleaming threads of myth. We weave elaborate tapestries and then bow before our own creation, forgetting that we ourselves were the weavers.

The beloved becomes a vessel, filled not with their own essence but with our projections, dreams, and unmet needs. They become less themselves and more the answer to every question we've ever asked of the universe. They become our salvation, our comfort, our proof that we are not alone in the vast emptiness. They become, in short, a myth.

And oh, how fervently we worship! We build temples of expectation, cathedrals of fantasy. We light candles of hope and sing hymns of possibility. We pray to them in the darkness—not with words but with the desperate longing of our bodies. We surrender our autonomy, our perspective, sometimes even our dignity. We offer everything at the feet of gods who never asked to be deified.

---