Had a breakthrough of sorts on my age old issue of wondering how much of me is “real” and how much is “performance”.
Recent developments have made it clear to me that there is a “real me” hiding in the deep dark shadows in the center of my being.
I can’t see it yet, but I know it is very scared and cold and lonely and freaking out from anxiety and paranoia most of the time and it is not at all a healthy critter.
It’s been running for so long that it’s forgotten how to stop.
And that poor little creature is the closest thing I have to a “real me” because it exists far below all the other layers of my being, right at the very heart of this whole operation, and I can tell it has been there for a very long time.
46 years, in fact. Sinced the day I was raped.
And yet, I hesitate to call that poor thing the “real” me because there is so much more to me than that. I have done a lot of growing since it was born
Not nearly as much as I should have, thanks to that terrible day, but still.
So I am willing to accept that our runaway fox character is in a sense the original me and the point of origin for all I am now, but that’s not the same as being the “real” me any more than the acorn was the “real” oak tree.
Still, you have to feel real bad for the little fella, don’t you?
I have been trying to talk him down for a long time now, and little by little, it works. He becomes more relaxed, more trusting, more comfortable, and less liable to be scared by his own shadow.
It’s slow going, though. Just like everything else. Sigh.
I wish I could just pick him up and cuddle him and stroke those cute lil ears and give him everything he needs and tell him everything is going to be okay now, he’s finally safe at home, and he never has to face it all alone again.
He’s been so very alone for such a long, long time. Nobody to rely on. Nobody he trusts to be there for him even when he is at his craziest and being near him unshielded put even veteran professional therapists into a blind panic.
Nobody he could turn to for guidance, or advice, or even a sympathetic ear. Hiding from the cold cruel world in the only place he feels safe, video games.
And yet nobody knows how much he suffers because he never lets his suffering show. Around others he is warm and friendly and cute and all the rest.
But when he is all alone, he cries frozen tears.
He is so closed off from the world that he had to invent a way to basically talk to himself for three or four hours a day via blogging just to get the words and feelings out.
He knows he needs to open up and connect with people. But he is so, so scared.
More after the break
On letting it show
And why I, um…. don’t.
It doesn’t make sense, at least on the surface, that I hide my pain like it’s a state secret. It’s not like I have even been particularly stoic or macho. I am not trying to project an image of infallible strength and I have never thought of myself as being afraid to show weakness or be vulnerable.
And yet, it cannot be denied that I have hidden inside my smooth façade for as long as I can remember. I am never totally vulnerable with anyone, not even my shrink, and it would be fair to say that I hide inside a shifting persona where not even I know what is real and what is mere illusion.
And this is not an accident. Deep internalized fear makes me need to be that kind of moving target, where my predators can’t tell where I am in all that mist and fog.
But they know that wherever they think I am, they’re wrong. And if they try to grab me. all they will grab is air.
That’s the idea, anyhow. And that might all make sense if I was some kind of super spy.
But I’m just some mentally ill dude whose pursuers are entirely imaginary and who therefore hardly needs to go to such lengths just to be “safe”.
Besides, it is impossible to be “safe” when you are locked in a cage with a lunatic and that lunatic is you.
Real safety would come from letting that fucker out. Then maybe I could get some peace and quiet, maybe even some restful sleep.
That would be so nice.
But I shudder to think of what “he” would do if set loose.
I mean, I get where Mister Hyde and the Hulk come from. They come from Jekyll and Banner’s deep well of repressed id and they would cease to exist if their respective “better halves” could loosen up and not be so goddamned neurotic.
And I am in that same rather leaky boat. I have an enormous reservoir of raw id energy that seethes and roils in a cavern deep inside me, and I am scared of what I might turn into if that ticking time bomb ever explodes.
And I know that is probably bullshit. This imaginary Mister Hyde version of myself, callous and manipulative and cruel, is most likely just an illusion my depression uses to keep me from messing with its power source and keep me repressing away.
Odds are that if I opened up the outflow valves on that reservoir of raging id, there would be a bad period at first but I would soon adjust rebalance my mind.
Only this time. with a lot less emotional toxic waste to deal with.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? And I swear I am gonna do it!
The second it stops being so scary.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.