Hiding...

I’ve come to appreciate this site over the other where I maintain a blog because of it’s anonymity.  In a way there’s a comfort in having the ability to hide myself & my thoughts here where it doesn’t get the traffic that the other may receive.  I get to post my truest self and should my mental amblings one day be read then it won’t likely be by anyone who encountered me in any other way but via this virtual medium.  Yes, there is a sort of purity to what I leave on the pages here.  All writers face the reality that when they write they may or may not reach the masses.  Some write just to that purpose.  Others write in hopes that one day, amongst all the possibilities that exist for others to read, that someone might pick up what we have penned & find something that touches them, that illusive realm of immortality that brings us to life in their minds if even for only a moment.  Perhaps that’s what I find here among the multitude.  I’ve always thought of myself as being a treasure found.  A treasure, you say, pretty damned arrogant aren’t you?  But don’t we all think or hope we’re something unique?  Some special illuminated element that only exists within us; some precious pearl that our frame of reference has shaped & polished?  Isn’t our worth based on our own opinion along side the value that another person places in us?  I think a true treasure has a balance of those two elements.  They never think too highly of themselves nor rely too heavily on the opinions of others to feel their worthiness.  From my own observations, treasures that are sought rarely live up to the expectations of those looking for them.  Those which are found without expectation are all the more highly prized simply because there was no preconceived notion of their value in the first place.  That’s who I’ve felt I have attempted to be, admittedly often fighting to balance that scale of self worth versus outside influence, more often than not feeling the heaviness of the doubt of value from either.  In living that struggle I trust the same wisdom has been gleaned, some difficult path has been forged and sentiments may present themselves in what I might write that bring the reader along with me on an exploration of life.  My hope is that for someone it can be a treasure found; a place where the joys and pains are shared empathically across time and distance.

My life is not all it could or should be.  Of course I take responsibility for my part in that though I also know I am not the sole influence to the good or bad of it all together, but It is my own, thus what I make it.  I lay in bed at night with a man beside me, never touching with the layers of bedding between us, who I feel no passion for.  Certainly I care for him but it is now out of habit rather than out of desire to be together.  He’s been a part of my life for nearly three quarters of the time I have existed.  My son still lives at home, at 25 still not equipped to live his life on his own.  It’s a pattern that we are living, not life.  I lay there at night often weeping into my pillow silent tears of longing.  For the life I’d hoped for, for what I’ve allowed myself to accept.  For futility I see in my existence; past, present & future.  For all that will never be mine and mourning the ideals I held that have not bourn but rare fruits, too few and far between to sustain a fulfilled life.  I weep with the realization that in my fifty one years of life I have never truly been cared for or loved in return with the passion and conviction that I have given.  I’m crushed under the knowledge, the harsh awareness of it all.  In a life where there aren’t second chances I have been given more than my fair share, trying desperately to shift the tide, finding that I may be past the point of having enough momentum to alter the current.  Each time I have done so thus far I have been left feeling my survival has brought additional punishment rather than reward.  I examine my circumstance and acknowledge that through it all, I am the common denominator.  I struggle to name the cause so that I have a place to start to focus my attentions for change but always finding that there are too many threads in too many directions and a proper tapestry can’t be woven from any of it.  I have attempted not to fall into the pattern we often tend to; that we trust in what we tell ourselves far more often than we deserve to trust in any one person, let alone ourselves.  But it seems to me that if my life is derailed then as it’s conductor I am the one at fault, I have trusted too much in my own navigation when it was clearly in error but I don’t know how to return to the track.  I feel utterly lost.  I have put forth gigantic efforts so that others would be more at ease in their role within my life; they have eagerly taken it and happily let me lead the way, learning by my instruction of example that there is no need to make their own efforts.  Is it little wondered then that when I do need them to finally be supportive they don’t know how.  I have created and trained the beast.  Oh how cruel the fates that the one thing I have to rely on those closest to me for is the one thing I hate having to need from others the most - basic mobility.  I have sabotaged my own life; my own happiness and my own success within it.  Most of all I sacrifice myself so that others are spared.  I’ve heard that we all do what we do because we get a payoff for it that we enjoy or we’d do something different.  Sometimes it’s in response to an event in our life but after a while it may continue simply out of habit.  Again, that word.  So what was/is my payoff.  I get to sacrifice myself on the altar of emotional superiority in that I have not caused others the pain that they have caused me.  I made that promise to myself when I was 15 and have kept it up to the point that I have done more harm to myself than anyone else possibly could have done.  OK, perhaps given some of the people in my life, maybe not quite as much… 

In that vein of self sacrifice the one thing I am absolutely consistent at is evasion.  Should anyone ask me how I am or what’s going on in my life I will spare them the grizzly details.  I suppose I follow the adage, “I could complain but who would care.”  I learned that people ask you how you are generally for one of three reasons.  The first being politeness.  Not that they really want to know but it’s a nice thing to act like they do in the preface of an impersonal conversation.  The second is comparison, to see if you might be doing better or worse than they are.  This is often to the negative where they hope to get information that makes them superior in their situation to yours.  They don’t really care how you are other than to make sure you’re in your place beneath them.  The third is out of genuine concern.  I can tell you that this is the one that is used the very least.  Even if I am in a venting frame of mind and feel that the question was posed sincerely you can bet that what I tell you is going to be merely a scratch of the surface.  The reality is going to be a hundred times worse than what I let on.  Of course, those who push for the facts are even more rare, almost mythical.  How many times have we heard of something happening to someone, a person living under conditions that were surprising to even those who were supposed to be close to them in their life but ‘had no idea it was so bad!’  I can tell you that they didn’t want to know.  They only asked for one of the first two reasons, never the last or they would have made a point to know.

So with that in mind; good, bad or otherwise, I am going to tell the raw truth of my existence here.  When I was younger, writing was much easier to do.  I think it’s because then, the emotions I was wrestling with were just below the surface.  Churning, boiling and erupting through the only real vent I allowed them.  Now, I’ve had a lifetime of stuffing them down, pretending they could be controlled and trying to become numb to the intensity of how much more deeply they cut.  If the psychological scars of life could be seen as physical ones are then my soul would be crisscrossed like a multidimensional road map with a topography that rarely ever lay smooth.  A friend told me I should write about what I go through but upon thinking about it I realized that doing so is not the release and restructuring it once was for me.  Then it had all been an internal business, sole proprietorship.  Now, all that I do impacts me and all those around me who I’ve let lean far too hard on my shoulders.  Writing about the current events just turns into a rehashing of all the things I’ve already lived that I am working hard to get through.  I’ve already lived them once, repeating them just to write about them is just too depressing.  Still, there are times when I do want to write, to find the way back to myself again, back to knowing the purpose of my life, finding a direction rather than whirling in this endless vortex of uncertainty.  Life doesn’t have a structured outline but I sure as hell wish it did, so I don’t know how this is all going to transpire but the only way it starts is to begin.  This post is just a step in many along that journey.