Life has given me my fair share of ups and downs, but this time in my life is something to behold....well...if you are a sadist that is. In that case, my life is a friggin masterpiece.
Did you ever look at a picture, and even though you really tried, turning the picture upside down, left, right, no matter, you still had no idea what the picture was? All it looks like is a jumbled mess, and you try squint your eyes, stand back, stand close....but nothing...just more confusion as your eyes and brain start to hurt. So you decide that it's best not to try. Just as you are walking away, you notice that as each person looks at the picture, they CAN see what it is, and they look, comment to one another, grimace, and move on. All the while you stand there, feeling like a fool, because it's clearly quite an important picture, and everyone else can see it.....but you.
That long winded metaphor is, in a nutshell, my life. Today, at 37 years old, I truly do not understand the picture, and I realize today, that the reason is, that I have not been the one to paint it.
I just wrote out a few pages of my life's history, and blah blah about my life and decisions, and I decided to delete it all, and instead, try part with some, hopefully intelligible and wise advice:
This is no self-help blog, as I have no idea how to help. This is a warning! This is Paul Revere galloping in, yelling about the British. This is an early storm warning about a tsunami. This is the advice that your mom was too scared to tell you.
We are all equipped with a gift from our caveman ancestors. The voice, or feeling inside of you, that something is afoot. That there is about to be a Woolly Mammoth stampede through your campfire, or that you need to run, RIGHT NOW, just RUN LIKE HELL, because something is coming, and it's hungry.
Now, a few hundred thousand years later, we don't need to fear a stampede, so inherently that voice inside is quiet for the most part. However, if you feel in your soul that there is something wrong in your life, there is. If you feel in your soul that you need to fix something, do it. If you feel in your soul that despite the work and risk, that your life needs a 180 degree change, make it happen. Do it. Now. That voice has evolved into a quieter, but equally insistent protector. You have no idea how, by listening, and acting, that your bold choice today, will save you from utter annihilation later. Our predators have evolved from Sabre-Tooth tigers, to human beings, that we know and love.No one else will save you from it, because, I have learned, people are naturally, and almost unbelievably selfish, and if you don't value your inner voice (I call it instinct) you will be used, and discarded, and left for dead, with nothing but a confused look on your face, and nothing to show for it. You will be the only one wondering how the hell you got ambushed, so easily, when you had all these people protecting you. (HA! Fooled you!)
I stand today, at 37, with no semblance left of the existence that I had created, with love, for my entire life. It was shattered by the people that I had lived for, almost each of them, to the person, took a turn at breaking a piece for me, while they looked me in the eye, and watched me cry in disbelief. I would start picking up the pieces, but I am still dumbstruck, staring into the wreckage that is my life, like a dog staring down the headlights of an 18-Wheeler on a dark highway.
Only I am left, to not only pick up the pieces, but try to figure out how a life, full of giving, self-sacrifice and love, could prove to be so empty, and fragile. How so easily, those that I thought respected and loved me, could so easily turn on me, and show me the true value of my heart, to them.When you learn the truth, it will shock you to your core. You will go from a room full of familiar, happy faces, to a sea of confused looking strangers, and a realisation that you AREN'T that interesting and your jokes are actually NOT that funny. Your attempts to make sense of the situation will end you sitting at a Tea Party, along with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, awaiting Alice's arrival.
So, I suppose one could look at a situation like this, and approach it from 2 perspectives:
1. I never saw reality in the first place. Deciding to paint beautiful pictures on dirty walls.
2. People change, and it can happen, that in a year, your entire world can turn 180 degrees on you.
No matter how much I try to rationalize the 2nd one, the co-incidence is simply too great, and too horrible to contemplate. I have not experienced the zombie apocalypse of love. No, I have however, been blinded, by my own need to have people love, and respect me. That need replaced my need for truth. That need became my reality. I respected them, and loved them, therefore, they MUST respect and love me back....right? When you behave like this, and blindly ignore your inner voice, that all is not as it seems, on those nights, where you battle to sleep, and all you can hear is this voice screaming at you to be careful. Don't ignore it. You WILL regret it. When your voice, crying out for help, or recognition, is left unheard, or you find out that your cries for help have become annoying noise to those people, you will die a death that I wish on no person.
I am responsible for being a great guy. I am responsible for giving others a good life. I am responsible for self-sacrifice to allow other's happiness. I am responsible for walking into a dark alley at 11PM, when I knew there was a serial killer there. I am NOT responsible for the knife plunging into my heart. I am responsible for allowing my soul to go swimming in the sea with my friends. I am NOT responsible for the wave that crushed and drowned me. Make sense? I hope so.
It is NOT your fault for being used and discarded, if you truly never saw it coming. If you trust, then continue to trust. If you love, then continue to love. But for God's sake, when your instinct tells you to double take, then do it, or it WILL be your fault.
From here, there is no map. No GPS. No phone-a-friend for help. Its just you, with what you have left as your own. There is no more first prize, there never really was. So from here it's a battle to create some type of picture from the blood and shards that I have in my hands, and at my feet. That's if I can ever stop standing, open mouthed, staring at the mess, like an idiot. I have a voice in me that tells me that I need to begin this repair job, but I never was any good with puzzles.
Take it easy
Brian
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