ANOTHER EPIPHANY

   This entry is not a story at all. It is just a way of recording an epiphany I had after someone else gave me the ability to do something I had forgotten how to do.  What had resulted from it slowly sneaked its way inside of me and nestled in deep to grow into something enormous and toxic; like a cancer I could not see and therefore didn't exist, or useful in the same way an opium addict weighs the effects he wants but fails to see the ever so pervasive addiction. It managed to change the way I perceived everything around me and how others saw me as well. Like my own favorite hero, Don Quixote, the inner frustrations manifesting inside of him to a paranoia that had a brave and noble hero transformed into a lunatic, tilting windmills and believing them to be giants.
    

    I am stunned with the ease that something like this can infect a person in general, but to have had it happen to me, and to have me completely unaware of the consequences of how others saw me because of it, is unbelievable.  Being able to have a person show it to me was about the same as expecting a person to continually hold up a VERY lifelike portrait of what it was I wanted to see about myself and having them say to over and over "Do you see it? Look closer." I kept telling myself I was listening and that the real problem was that they weren't understanding that I was no idiot and that "YES" I can see it. I can see it just as plainly as I always see it, and "YES, I did look close at the god damned painting", and that the only problem I have with it now is that the person holding it for me isn't listening to what I am telling them about what it is I see in it.

And then it moved.

     Suddenly I realized that all this time I had been POSITIVE that they were the one too weak to comprehend what I was telling them, that in fact, it was me that was too weak to realize what it was they were pointinting at. It isn't a portrait at ALL. It's a mirror. It is a reflection of myself. And the uglier it got the harder it was for me to see it for what it was. Even worse was that the reason it was so hard to hold up was that what I wanted it to be was not what they appreciated it for. I was spending so much time expecting them to apply paint to a portrait, at the same time they were becoming exasperated by  trying to convince me of the lunacy of applying paint to a mirror.  It doesn't matter one damn bit how carefully you apply paint or that you cared to use the very best paint at all. Not if that you are doing is painting over a mirrored reflection of yourself and destroying the use of the mirror entirely.

     How this actually happened is a bit clearer to me now, and when it happened makes it easier to understand how it got into me in the first place. It started two years ago and, like most diseases, got me when my defenses were down and I was at my most vulnerable. I had come back from Afghanistan and a situation where, even as scary and frustrating as it was, I had defined myself as capable and powerful and needed.  I was an authority for what I knew and did it well. People relied on me when they couldn't do it on their own, and I had managed to become trusted so much that they never gave it a second thought.  It was EXACTLY what I had worked for my whole life.  What I cam home to, however, was the exact opposite. Not only was there no way of continuing what I had accomplished there, but there was no need of it from the people around me. I became less and less needed and more and more secondary.  Finally I had completely failed even myself and spent two days on the floor of the bathroom. No one even knew to look for me.

     While I sat there, I began to think. I had a feeling inside of me that was undeniably an anger and a rage but that had absolutely no outlet for it.  It may have been what finally got me to pick myself up off the floor and use it as a crutch to walk, but I quickly adapted it as a prosthesis and kept it for something I did not need. It became a part of me, little by little, until I was back to being able to move around and think again with the same amount of energy I had before, but now was being driven by something that was no longer myself. I stayed angry because I thought that was all that was left of me, and I used the anger to justify the resentment I had, and the loneliness I felt. It became the easy out excuse for what it was I was not being seen as, and the longer I used it, the less of me could be seen through it. I became weaker and weaker, and less of myself, with every passing day.  Any energy I had to do anything was now being expended as a way of earning favor rather than defining myself with it. The harder I tried, the more exasperated I became by feeling that the only way to not fail was to keep doing it with this toxic thing rather than myself.  I began to believe that I had to earn everything rather than be defined by what I already was but couldn't find the way to express.  The result to others, however, is a slow miserable building frustration with watching a person define themselves by nothing but a series of accomplishments based on fear of rejection rather than by the truer person I once was.

     I have very amazing friends. That is not a point of pride for me at all, but more for them and the abilities that so many people seem to miss in them. More often now, I need to swallow a bit of my own arrogance and undue pride and admit that I miss it in them as well.  What one of them did for me by telling me that what they saw made me seem weaker in their eyes was a horrible thing to have to learn.  Had they not done it, however, I am sure no one else would have known or cared enough at all to say it, and it gave me the ability to see what was right under my own nose.  I am very good at being a problem solver and spend a great deal of my time looking forward and preplanning my defenses. But sometimes, the enemy at the gate gets in and breeds and army within the very walls I pride myself on being able to keep up. To say that it was plain as the nose on my face is useless as most people have no idea what's there at all unless someone else tells you. It's like eating a hotdog with mustard and then trying to look serious with mustard up your cheek. It would stay there all damn day unless someone cared enough to tell you.

     What this awareness has been able to do is to allow me to look at me from the outside and see what it was I was doing with a different perspective. Not in the way I saw what I was doing, but they way others took what I was doing. That is far more important than it seems because that was my intention in the first place, wasn't it? To have them see what I needed them to see?  Well what good is it if I had already preconceived what I needed from them without ever considering what it was they ACTUALLY perceived from it?  If those two things are different, then what I did, regardless of the intention, is a wasted effort.  I see and hear about so many people who are furious at all the work and effort they do and are unrealized and disrespected for it.  Maybe the reason is that what we expect isn't always going to be what we hoped if we are allowing the toxic and cancerous things to be defining us rather than our own true nature.

     The worst of this whole toxicity has been my assumption that the only way for it to make sense is with what I brought to its definition. My definition, however, had been skewed and convoluted by something else, and no matter how hard I tried to justify it or reason it, my only solution was to expect others to react to it. I spent time saying "you should" or "you shouldn't" or "why aren't you doing it this way" and at the same time kept telling people that I understood.  That wasn't true at all.  I did understand the situation completely, but what I didn't understand was that the solution was something that had to come from me internally, and I couldn't do it with a mass of tangled vines wrapped around who I really was. I had been trained into believing that the solution to what I wanted was to be done by someone else adapting to my new toxic environment, and not myself that had to work to remove it in order to be seen for what I truly am. The more I tried, the more the toxicity wound up defining me and actually worked to drive away what I was trying to bring closer. I often refer to people who do this as creating a "self fulfilling yet damning" prophecy. Its like trying to attract fireflies into a jar by spraying a flame thrower in the yard and then being upset that your jar isn't as full as everyone else.  Well, Boo hoo ya' big baby. Get a tissue and put down the overly dramatic flame thrower.

     The best thing about all of this is that I am not one to allow a weakness within me once it has been pointed out. Not only pointed out,  directly tied to the degeneration of what it was I was trying to rebuild.  It's true I have my own vices I choose for myself, but weakness is not something I am prone to simply allow and ignore in myself by pretending they do not exist. Being able to see it for what it really is and how it has been controlling what I can and can't do has become instantly enlightening. I slept like a real human being for the first time in months last night and had no problem being able to define what it is I have to offer to other people. Those things are mine to give and are far better than what had grown beyond my control. Now that it is out, and I am back to seeing who I am without it, I will either be seen for it in others, or I will not. It is no longer a rampant weed that makes me less of who I am and makes me  feel as though the only thing I am being measured by others is the size of the weed. It was a self induced brain washing, and I wanted it to or not, it took away the very best that I have that makes me unique. I only hope that by writing this, that other people see their own weeds and stop for just a moment to look in under their own walls to make sure that what they fear the most hasn't snuck in to be counted in the ranks of defenders of your castle. It is EASY to have it happen, and once you believe that what you perceive in yourself is normal, you fail to see that others no longer see anything else of you at all.