A New Year’s Eve Silhouette

When you meet someone new, human instinct is to show yourself in the best possible light. When you are attracted to that new person, personal instinct is to continue to show yourself in the best possible light.

Putting on one’s “best face” is a wonderful way to let our qualities shine through. If used for confidence to break the ice, it can help us begin the first steps of what may become a wonderful journey with someone. If used as a facade, it can lead to trouble when we are forced to show the flaws of ourselves.

A silhouette is a faceless figure which only shows the outline of who we are. The enigma is discovering the face which belongs. And sometimes, that’s easier said than done, but not before a lack of details makes the deepest first impression of all.

I first spoke to Espy on New Year’s Eve, roughly at about 3am. So, technically, it was January 1st. And it was so late at night that she had to whisper and dull the brightness of her laptop monitor to keep from waking up the people who had fallen asleep nearby.

She was at a New Year’s Eve Party and because of the darkness of the room, she appeared to me as a silhouette on Skype. I couldn’t see her face nor any of her features, other than her long hair. Up to that point, I had seen one close-up of her face – a black and white picture which now no longer appears on Tumblr (in lieu of the identity scares on bigger sites like FetLife.)

Her voice was whispered. So I couldn’t hear what she truly sounded like.

Low light and low volume made that Skype call unrevealing in the usual, conventional ways. But the laws of attraction found a different pathway that night.

In fact, her only revealing characteristic for which I could base my first impression of her on was the one thing and the only thing that truly matters with starting points … her personality.

And she shined with a light from within which illuminated who she was. I was introduced to the concept of a conversation –

– that spoke and then actually listened, in turn.

– that wanted to know what I meant by the term “Yittlin” & why I wrote so much.

– that drew me in, compelling me to open up to a whispering girl I was believing to be an angel at that point.

We spoke for a time that night, but ended before dawn light. So I never saw her face nor heard her voice. But I knew so much about her, it seemed. And it’s timeliness, just three hours into the new year, made perfect sense.

Little did I know, the resolutions of 2012 would begin with a faceless silhouette. But this silhouette, with her amazing cheeriness and mesmerizing personality, never wore a facade. She spoke from her heart, held nothing back and showed me that what I sought didn’t require travel to find it, nor riches to keep it happy.

All it required was the bravery of a simple, sweet heart to speak the truth.

To this very day, the essence and nature of Espy is exactly who she showed herself to be on that first night. Her qualities still shine in my eyes and in the eyes of everyone who has met her.

She never wore a facade and by showing her qualities through words, she never worried about having to reveal the things often hidden from a first impression.

Espy spoke with no desire to brand any image of herself. She chose to be herself and by doing so, was able to be captivating.

And she still is.

The next day, I got to see her face and hear her voice. She was beautiful and the sweet tone of her words made clear to me that I had been blessed with having seen the glow of the brightest star in the constellation. And she began as a New Year’s Eve Silhouette.