“I don’t go to church, but I look in the window.” -Robert Frost, American Poet
To me, there is nothing more painful than looking into your own mind and realizing what lies in there and how you keep it in there because you dare not let them escape or that it is impossible for them to exist in the real world.
I think everyone has this dichotomy of thoughts and hopes. The good ones that are so good that they are not even based in reality and the bad ones that are so bad you have to fight with everything you have to keep them from getting out and letting the craziness explode into the real world.
For the past few weeks, I have been wrestling with both thoughts on the same subjects. Love, Work, and Life has a crazy combination of things that lead me to some unrealistic expectations and crazy fears. Unfortunately, none of the realistic thoughts that I have hoped to find becoming reality have and all of the horrific dark thoughts that need to be hidden away have. I wrote before about how I always try to look at the positive side of things, but I also try to be realistic about things but it is often the case that this only works for things that aren’t directly related to me. This happens successfully when I am looking at things from the outside or in a big group. However, when it comes to my personal life, I am much more likely to be overly cynical and enjoy a bit too much of the pie in the sky.
Today my biggest pie in the sky hope/dream/idea came crashing down. It was so crazy and unrealistic that I knew the real situation, understood it, did the math and it all added up to exactly what happened yet it wasn’t until today that I decided that it was time to retire the thought of a dreamer and start accepting the truth that really exists.
It hurts when it does come crashing down. I have great friends to support me but sometimes your own twisted thoughts and explanations of things give them a structure they build on too high to the point where they don’t realize what they are actually building on might not be the most stable of the ground. Then you fall, you fall hard and you speed up so much that it is impossible for them to catch you. You hit the ground hard and maybe splatter a little bit. This is where the friends matter. This is where your support group gives you your strength. The biggest shame about my friends is that I rarely let any of them completely in and I think that hurts things overall. I give them small windows where they can see a lot but they really don’t get into the minutia of it and get to figure out what the hell is going on completely. Partly because I am afraid to let people completely in, but also because I have no idea what will get out if I let someone totally in.
Don’t get it confused, I don’t think I am some super deep meaningful human with thoughts and feelings unlike anyone else. I just think that I am someone who is a bit self-conscious about what’s going on in my mind and doesn’t want to give everything up to anyone for fear of driving them away because it’s hard to share some of the deep stuff without letting a lot of the weird stuff out too and I just don’t know if it will come across as a problem or something wrong with me.
I have friends all over, multiple countries, with different perspectives and knowledge in your life that are able to pick you up from multiple sides without interfering with one another. This is what I am lucky for, having these people around in my life. Without people like them, and in some cases, exactly them, in the past, I would be nothing like who I currently am and honestly, there is a chance I would be no one if there weren’t friends like them around.
There is a quote from a song that makes me smile and it is, “I’m not what I should be, and half of what I could be, but I’m not who I was.” Which speaks to me. I don’t know if you have noticed but I enjoy finding a little bit of wisdom in simple quotes and lines that people came up with. Sometimes it is heavily edited and manicured writing like in a book and sometimes it is just off the top of their head in an impromptu speech but both can lead to great understandings and views of yourself.
I am not who I should be. I’m not what I want to be yet and who the world thinks I should be. I am half of what I could be. I am maybe half of what I possibly could have been if everything in my life went right and took care of me but really who is? I don’t think there is anyone who is exactly the best they could possibly be. But, I’m not who I was. This is really what matters to me. I am changing, I am getting better than what I once was and that’s really what I am trying to live for. To be better than I was yesterday, and make the tomorrow a better place, for everyone I know, than yesterday was.