looking in the mirror
Ξ April 30th, 2008 | → | ∇ General, Philosophy |
It’s been several days since I’ve blogged. Nothing truly interesting has happened. At least nothing that seems that important.
I got my weekend to myself. I shared it with my family, but also took the time I needed. I don’t know what to do about Daniel, but that’s a whole story that I don’t feel the need to discuss at the moment. I’ve been searching for answers for a long time. Trying to figure out who I am, who I’m becoming. It’s never easy. There are always more questions, and I suspect there always will be. But there are some more answers now. They don’t make me entirely happy.
About six months ago I learned from my memories that I haven’t been whole in a very long time. I don’t know how long, but since childhood. I’m high-functioning, but I’m very damaged. My ego tells me that my functionality is a testament to my strength of character, of will. I’m not sure that’s true. Sometimes I suspect that my high-functioning survival traits have more to do with hiding the truth than they do with any show of strength or stability.
Around that time, I shared this knowledge with one of my teachers. What concerned him, what he seemed almost obsessive about, is that though I recognize that I’ve been damaged, that I can be healed. The wounds can be closed and I can be whole. He was most insistent about that. There is a part of me that detests that insistence, resents the intrusion, and distrusts the certainty of his words. At the time I told him I was working on it. That I was trying. The problem is I’m really not sure he’s right. I’m not sure that I can be truly whole.
We are creations of our world. Our experiences, perceptions, and discernments create the world we live in. And my world gives me precious little evidence of healing. All around me I see people who have had pieces of themselves ripped away. There are those who are far better off than others. But all of us are damaged in some way or another. Fruit on the rack, spotted, and growing nearer to rotting every day.
I look in the mirror, look deeply into my own eyes, and I see a well of sorrow. My eyes vary in color and highlight, but lately they are brown. A Deep ring of indigo surrounds them, and a pupil as dark as it can be. I look at my eyes and they don’t seem to be very connected to me. They are flat, and they hide anything that might give me away. As if it were someone else looking back at me, someone else who has taken over this body this life, and I don’t know that person.
In my head, in my heart, I’m just a kid. I don’t know that I consider myself a child, but I don’t feel like an adult. In my head, I watch what’s going on around me and I feel myself moving through it like a salmon in a stream, or perhaps a well. I can see everything and I understand it. But I can’t always express it. When I look in the mirror I see the person that the world sees, those solid eyes that give nothing away to anyone without the skill to See. That person has survived things I don’t even like to think about. He’s been through a lot, and the trials show. He is bitter and sometimes he is cold, and he will do anything in his power to protect me. And it’s not that I’m not grateful for that protection, but I do not want to be protected anymore. My bodyguard has become my jailer.
I’m not sitting back and waiting for the person I see in the mirror to go away. He can’t go away. But I am trying to figure out how I can let him pass without killing us both. How do I honor and celebrate the experiences he’s been through without just becoming who he is? How can I take back the power he has without destroying myself in the process? — It’s not an easy question to answer. I have a lot of ideas. Some of them seem to be working, but only time will tell.
