There are certain things that are out of reach because I don't know how to invite them in. That's not an excuse. It's fact. You don't jump out of the nest for the first time and transform into a Peregrine Falcon. Before there's grace, there's a fall.
The most glaring absence is Love. Even if it calls out to me there's no guarantee I'll get it. Quite often, my response to it sends it back into hiding, even if my response was intended to welcome it. It's like I'm lost in the desert and diving into a tropical mirage every ten feet. I anticipate cool, and swallow scorched sand.
I don't see my overtures clearly, or objectively. I think I'm fanned out in a dazzling show of Peacock temptation because that's what I designed, and put together. I forget my Design School was forged, and the teachers were unqualified to teach.
So what I miss is what actually appears. Out there, I come across as an ordinary pigeon, snapping my neck out for the recoil like a feathered metronome. The presentation I put together in the hope of communicating interest is manifesting in the opposite form, and I don't know how to fix it. If someone would take the time to teach me how to love, I could do it.
My Perch
Everywhere I am I become an outsider, relegated to the perimeter, because that's my drill. I'm comfortable there. I'm a toe-dipper at the edge of the pool. I can study people from there. I study their behavior. I study the way they interact. I watch the gestures they perform, and decipher the intentions beneath them so I know what goes together. I note what seems natural to people I call real. The ones who actually establish connection, the ones I envy. I study them in an effort to join them, but I still wind up snapping my head like a fool. Some habits aren't habits at all. They're who you are.
The more I observe, the closer I am to accepting the possibility that I may not be intended for full membership. I may not gain access to the communal side of the world. Some of us don't. My skill, I think, is reading what's said in the empty spaces on the page, and translating them. So much of who we are is stated in what we choose to omit. It's not unusual, or accidental, to discover the pulp of an individual in the space they hope you skim over.
When you play at providing a voice for what was intentionally left silent you endanger the truth, and when you do that you break the law that promised to cradle those spaces in a covenant. It's not that people are unaware of the actual meaning of things, it's that there's an unspoken agreement to deny them. It's an agreement that makes sense.
Admitting the truths we're aware of dismembers the versions of them we've created to accommodate what we can accept, and anyone doing so performs a sacrilege. If you do so haphazardly, and routinely, you risk losing inclusion in the society constructed upon them. As the outsider that I was made into, any sense of belonging I get comes from entering those silent phrases, and uncovering the fallacies, and distortions buried in them. I couldn't stop if I wanted to, not with the infinite depths of loneliness that wait to replace them. Entering those spaces may be as close as I'll get to community.
Even a maladjusted hermit like me needs others. I'm only a Hermit because of the mold that made me.
False Entry
Ironically, the only time I felt like I was part of the world was when I was married. In fact, that may be why I took the vows. The ring I wore granted me access to all the things I was kept out of, or refused to enter, and everyone had to accept it. It was the ultimate membership card.
As a boy, part of me believed that if I acted like other people, I’d be a real one. It's not that simple. I pull it off for a little while, but an ache always develops. It actually hurts to care about some of the things that are popular to care about. That's not meant to be pretentious, or degrading. I think I'm missing something integral. I want to be able to enter a political party passionately. I want to invest in one side of an argument that's beyond my ability to manipulate, or influence, the outcome of. I want to care about green waste, and gulf oil spills, and CEO salaries, and my personal best in a marathon, but I can't. Or I don't. Instead, I pace the sideline.
I have no idea.
Scar Tissue
I, like many of us, collected wounds as a child. Those wounds have healed over even if they haven't been fixed. They're a part of me now, and always will be. I've even grown to like them. I no longer wonder when the scar tissue will disappear. Sad fact is, it won't. And there's a reason skin does that.It does that to remind you, every minute of every day, what you were like before the rip. It does that to remind you that no matter how hard you try, or how much you wish, things can't ever be the same. That might be alright if you find the strength to admit things needed to change. All of a sudden you're thrown over a horse and you're Christopher Reeve in his wheelchair saying you're actually grateful for who you are now.
Sure, you have a scar, but it's alright because at least with the scar you're finally grateful for the thousands of things you took for granted before. You're grateful because you're finally in the depths of yourself, at the core. So much of the world is just cosmetics.
It's easier to tidy up the outward appearance than it is to put the inside in order. And if everyone is willing to believe the outside accurately represents the inside, why do the work? If you don't want anything more than "I'm fine" when you ask how someone is, why ask the question?
Because it makes us feel better to know the agreement is still the order. We could talk to a friend about half the shit we pay a therapist to listen to, but we don't want them to know the parts of ourselves we're afraid of. I only enter it because I was never allowed to keep mine private. My family painted it on billboards, and then my ex-wife printed it on flyers.
Christopher Reeves breaks my heart, and he makes sense to me. I know what he means when he says he's grateful for the loss of his physical body. Without it, he was face-to-face with what his body stood between. He was face-to-face with everything he hoped would remain unseen, and he discovered that what made him beautiful was his fragility. When you can no longer protect it the only alternative is to wear it. When you wear it, no one can hurt you. Nothing can match the pain it took to bring it to the surface.
I'm ready to try love again, because I trust the woman asking to love me. And I believe she does. She loves me the way I deserved to be loved over the past fifty years. She loves me the way I hoped to be loved. Most importantly, she loves me the way I want to love.
I know God doesn't grant favors, but I'm asking anyway. Can I have this one? Can I embody what I've been deprived of, and repair a fraction of what I damaged? Can I experience safety? Why else am I here............?
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| baaaaaaaaby! |
