So, yeah, when you’re a little kid people say things about you, like judge and jury. They will say that you are articulate and speak very well when you are 3, but when you are 4 you are sassy and have a big mouth. When you are 5 they are determined to silence you, but only at certain times that you’re supposed to know without being told. When you are 6, they work in concert with strangers to silence you entirely, to force you into a state of meaningless obedience, to pride themselves on your conformity. After that, it’s all out war for the conquest of your spirit, and you try very hard to survive.
Who was I before they told me who I am? I have been pondering the essence of that question long before I heard it articulated on a meditation video. It’s such a profound question, in my not so humble opinion, and one that I cannot readily answer. I believe that I may have been more a free spirit, one who believed she could and would do just about anything, one who enjoyed making sounds and seeing colors and was at peace with herself. That’s not a bad thing, until it became a very badthing, until it became a battle for my identity and my heart. My heart held the all the torn and frayed fibers of my being in a sealed vault, locked with a key that I had put in a safe place, a secret place, a place that could not be accessed easily. I did a very good job of that, so good a job that I could not find it later, when I thought it might be safe. After a while, I forgot where I had put it and what was inside stayed locked away very tightly, but safe…with only minimal amounts of sustenance or joy, no moments of wild abandon. Safe, but nearly dead.
Safety is one of those things not as simple as it sounds. If you are going for a walk, it’s probably not safe to do that alone in an unfamiliar place where the hazards are unknown. It’s not safe to go for a mountain height without ensuring that you have the necessary tools, like maybe some extra socks, a blanket, a flashlight, and maybe a compass. It gets cold in the hills after dark, so it’s best to be prepared. Even so, you can only be proactive about dangers you’ve heard about, or read about, or imagine. You are probably not safe from uncommon occurrences like unmapped cliffs and being attacked by creatures whose very existence is denied. Safety at the price of curiosity, and sacrificing desire to have experience simply for the sake of experience, seems to go far wide of the goal.
There are many keys lost, many locks broken, many locks that remain sealed. When a vault has been violated, the lock may be savagely broken along with the treasure it protects. Thieves and demons enjoy forcing entry into places they do not belong, rationalizing that if there was nothing important there a lock would not have been necessary. Conformists, seemingly benign, are compelled to violate spaces not meant for their presence, usually in order to maintain the semblance of control. When you limit the questions, you always know the answers. There’s no challenge there, and no surprises, or so you think.
Demons, or destuctors, may be the worst. . They will destroy the sacred rest of every spirit they encounter, just for the hell of it. They are simply malevolent, often disguising that with success at some base endeavor,like the supremacy of their wealth. Whoever dies with the most toys wins, but whoever dies with the most money controls everyone else (or so they think). There is no spiritual sustenance there, no higher good, no universal synergy. These are conflict driven and restless spirits that have forgotten who they are, and have been separated from the Light. There may be no salvation for these, not because it’s withheld by a higher source, only because they deny they are in need of it, even deny its very existence.
People often believe me to be shut down, closed off, not open to love. That may be true, but it is understandable. People who professed their love to me have done the most damage in my life, sometimes out of ignorance and other times out of their own inadequacy. I have always said that I attract narcissists, who are usually cleverly hidden sociopaths, like flies are attracted to dung and rotting food. I don’t like telling people no, and have proven to be a sucker for attention and compliments. That is my shortcoming, but I came by it honestly – that’s what I was taught and shown from a very early age, and I am only now realizing that I can’t go home to that again.
All of this to say…what? I’m not sure. Perhaps I simply needed to get that all out in a virtual reality that feels more real to me than most of what I can touch. Reality has always been subjective and fluid, and in my case confusing enough to want to end it. Hypocrisy has always been the most disconcerting and devastating thing to discover about people. That has been the case since I was a kid, but now it’s enhanced by the devastating presence of denied truth. It’s one thing to say one thing and do another in reference to soft concepts or certain idealisms or biases, but it’s quite another to simply alter the facts, or even the reality, of those things for your own comfort. Telling me that you love me and wish me peace while robbing me blind is one thing, but telling me that you’re not robbing me is another. It’s my fault, somehow, that bad things happen and I should just try harder to be better somehow to avoid that?
This is the mess that causes personalities to fracture, psyches to unravel, and hearts to shatter into a million pieces that cannot be restored. There is a rock in the road, and I can touch it. If I stomp it with my foot, it will not move and I am likely to have a sore foot. All of my bodily senses make that a realistic truth. There are some, however, who encourage me to deny the rock is there, deny that my foot hurts, deny there’s an obstacle. This causes such a disconcerting lack of confidence in my ability to navigate the world that I often feel that I should not try.
When I was a kid, I was the dependable one, the smart one, the precocious sprite who was the light of many eyes. Now I am a fat, old woman with an autoimmune disease and whose spirit has been battered and bruised for too many decades. An old woman who has to summon all manner of ethereal forces to make it through any given day. An old woman who does not feel wise, who does not feel as though she has much to contribute for the betterment of anything or anybody. Perhaps that is her pre-dementia brain talking, or perhaps it is true. If I could live somewhat comfortably in a mountain cave that had internet service, I would choose that. Sometimes I just don’t feel as though I have anything to keep me here except spite.
So, how do I keep myself safe without snuffing my own spark? Safe from the spiritual destruction of the well meaning, of the ones who say they love me (and probably do) but see my value only in terms of compliance, safe from the many perils and footfalls foretold by others who are nothing like me? I do not have any rational answer for that. At this point in the twilight of my life, I can only say that it’s hit or miss with finding the lost key. Not to worry, though, because I’ve finally realized the damned cage was open to begin with.
I’ll come back to this conversation with myself at some point, but for this day, it’s enough. My recovery program promises me that if I accept the things I cannot change, change the things I can, and have the wisdom to know the difference I will no longer regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it, that I will know peace. I have no frame of reference for that, so maybe that’s all true for me now and this is just how life goes in a human body that lives on a big rock that spins somewhere out in the middle of space. Maybe. But I’m still gonna try and find where the bathrooms are, some decent Thai food and a cold drink, and then call it a day.
The Sound Hole 