Through The Mirror Brightly

We are all made of stars.

We really are, all of us are made from the same stuff as stars and that makes us truly remarkable. Each and every one of us. Our value is incalculable. We are priceless.

It was only when I grew up, that I learned this. I grew up, and in growing up, I knew a great many things. Things that we should all know, if only we would see. Of course, as I began to open up and use my mind, I realised that I had not previously known as much as I thought I had. We build walls around ourselves and paint them as though they were the scenery. Eventually we accept the confines of our self-built prison so totally that we think we are somehow a finished article.

No such thing as the finished article exists when it comes to people. We’re a life long project. That sounds like a lot of hard work though, and it is. And taking those walls down and truly entering the world we were always meant to be in seems scary, and that is because it is. It’s supposed to be. All the best and most worthwhile things should frighten us, after all, stars reside in the bosom of the infinite and the infinite is about as mind-blowingly terrifying as it gets.

Some people grow up gradually. Some don’t ever grow up, these people are not to be confused with the childish, for they are quite the opposite of childish, they appear to be grown up, but they have lost their way and their inner child weeps within them, hoping for them to one day wake up to their true nature. Then there are those who open up like a flower in the night and they are forever changed.

That was me. I was one of the lucky ones. I entered the Summer of Eighty Eight a boy and I emerged a man. A childish man intent on living the life I was always destined to live. But as is sometimes the case with life, I was not to know that this was when everything changed for me. Only now do I look back on that Summer of Eighty Eight and see that that was when it all started for me. I suppose I had to go out into the world and do in order to be. I had to make it stick before I could stand upon a summit and look down upon that point in my life and see it for what it was.

I was eighteen years old that Summer. A boy with pretentions of being a man. I’d dropped out of six form because it didn’t completely gel with me. The catalyst for my departure was a science teacher who seemed to have it in for me from the start. Now I’m older, I do wonder about that. At one time, I thought maybe I reminded him of someone who had treated him badly. We all have pigeonholes and from time to time we forget to attend to those temporary judgements that we make about people. If he was reacting badly towards me, then it’s not inconceivable that I was doing the exact same thing to him. What I did know was that the girl who sat next to me was getting pass marks in every test and I was getting the lowest marks of my life. The fact she was struggling with the subject, and so copying my answers, told me all I needed to know about Mr F. It didn’t help matters that the guy had a white fleck of spittle that would travel around his lips as he taught. There was something disgustingly hypnotic about that spittle, it distracted me as it went from upper lip to lower lip and then slunk along that lip before transferring again. The highlight of the show was when the spittle disappeared. I’d then look across the front rows of pupils to see if anyone had caught the leaping teacher’s pet. Of course, I shared my fascination of this glutinous marvel and soon enough half the class was transfixed by the tiny and sticky imp and it’s dread antics.

Sixth form wasn’t all bad though. My English classes were the polar opposite of the science classes. My English teacher, Mrs P, was passionate about her subject and also her students. She brought people to life in a way that is so rare. You just knew that she was interested in you and that she cared. There are switches inside us that open us up to so much more life and she pushed one of those switches in me. I guess she had had that self-same gift from someone in her formative years and she was paying it forward. In those English classes I dared to write and share poetry and I expressed myself with confidence, opening up to possibilities I never even knew were mine for the taking.

All the same, I left. When something goes bad it’s difficult to overlook it and pretend like everything is OK. Some people seem to do just that, but either I’m built differently, or I’m more aware of the ongoing damage people behaving badly can wreak on themselves and those around them.

Dropping out is failing as far as any teen is concerned. I put a brave face on it and told people that it was onwards and upwards, but that science teacher had won and that was all there was to it. I found myself staring into the abyss, but there were no warnings on that dark place and I was oblivious to it staring back at me.

Somewhere along the way I must have told myself that things couldn’t get any worse. These words are a spell and the spell summons the Shit Pixies. The Shit Pixies really know what they are about and they have fun with Moaning Minnies who think their lot is as bad as it gets. They heard me and they marked me. Then they did their thing.

Going into the holidays, my lot was about to get a lot, lot worse.

I’d finished with school a couple of months before the holidays. There was no point in going on with something that just wasn’t working. I then busied myself with several jobs and projects. I found that there was plenty of work for a young man keen to work and help out. I threw myself into mowing lawns, gardening, washing windows and delivering leaflets. Keeping myself busy seemed like a good thing to do. Mostly it was, but there were downsides to this one trick strategy of mine. Hard work alone doesn’t cut it, but I wasn’t to know that back then. 

There was a lot that I didn’t know and the worst of it was that I didn’t know that I didn’t know it. Such is the folly of brave youth.

Hard work alone also gets in the way of other aspects of life. Like relationships. I’d misconstrued what I had seen. I was following examples without thinking things through. I was just getting on with it. And while I was doing this, my girlfriend Susan was getting on with someone else.

“I’ve been seeing someone else,” Susan told me.

We were at my parents house. No one else was in. Usually, this would be a prime opportunity to kiss. Kissing was a great pursuit back then. We kissed like it was a new craze. We explored the art of kissing in the pursuit of excellence, as well as the pursuit of a higher state of being. The feelings that were produced by kissing were on a different level and yes, sometimes the kissing led to other things, but mostly it didn’t and that was fine by me.

Back then, I worked off this assumption that if things were fine by me then they were likely to be fine with the people I was with. There was more to this assumption. I wasn’t dumb, even back then I wasn’t a complete clot. The check to this assumption was that if something wasn’t fine then it was an essential subject of discussion and the discussion would be had.

I mean, why wouldn’t it?

You’re standing on my foot.

Oh! Apologies old bean! How careless of me. Here, let me move so I’m not standing on anyone’s foot.

Job done. 

Everything is right in the world again.

Surely this was how it worked? It didn’t bear thinking about if it didn’t work this way. Things would get messy really quickly if people didn’t bother talking about the big things.

And messy they did get.

Susan hadn’t spoken up when things weren’t fine. Well actually, she had. She’d spoken to an opportunist in her class. Now I wasn’t at school, he saw his chance and he took it. His name was Timothy and he was a twat of the highest order. This was not my assessment of his character, this definition of the boy-man proceeded him and the timing of his theft of Susan. 

He wasn’t entirely to blame. I understood that from the off. I’d dropped the ball and not spent enough quality time with Susan. And Susan had failed to mention any of her concerns, or that she was no longer happy, or that she was thinking of sleeping with the worst possible human being within a five mile radius. Honestly, it were as though in vengeful spirit, she’d built Timothy from all the things I was not and then imbued him with the special ability to be smarmy beyond imagining. He deployed his smarm via a smile that everyone wanted to wipe from his face. To make it just a little bit worse, he also had henchmen. These henchmen were a travesty of the profession of henchmen. Henchmen would be so ashamed of them, they’d go out on strike in a thrice. They weren’t muscle. They were tattle-tales who watched over Timothy and would tell on anyone who they deemed to be a threat. They added a big dollop of slime to his smarmy sleaze.

Following this terrible revelation, my ego took a pasting, but not straight away. First my heart broke and then my pride took a battering. I completely wrong-footed Susan in the moment of her ultimate betrayal and inadvertently made her dumping me much more difficult than she’d anticipated.

“OK,” I said to her, fully intending it to be OK. After all, this was the first I knew of any problem in our relationship, and you were supposed to work at these things. A relationship didn’t come with fries. It wasn’t something you discarded if you weren’t feeling it. We’d committed to each other. Susan was the only girl I’d ever slept with and until this revelation of hers, I was her one and only too. I was certainly her first and we’d been considered and gentle on that front. It had been incredibly important to us both. But not to the slippery and slimy Timothy though. The value he put on relationships and making love was very obviously lower than a snakes belly, “we can work this out,” I told Susan.

I remember Susan looking stunned and then confused, as though I’d produced a large salmon from nowhere and slapped her about the face with it, “but I love him,” she said as she regained some of her composure.

“You can’t!” I protested.

This pushed her right back into a state of confusion. I’d like to think that she felt guilty, but I never saw and evidence of guilt, and she certainly didn’t say she was. Not a surprise as I learnt that she was the type of person who didn’t think talking was a good idea. Let’s face it, she didn’t think and eventually I’d put those two pieces of logic together. Then I’d conclude that people who don’t think and just blunder through life are dangerous. 

Seems obvious now, but I think you have to be burned by those fires to understand how hot they really are. Even then, the brain-zombies can get you. There are people who have the appearance of thinking. I still haven’t sussed how this is achieved. Not thinking, and yet looking like thought is or has taken place. Seemingly reasonable people who at some point will drop you from a great height and have no idea that they have even done let go of you. Probably because it hadn’t registered with them that they had you in the first place.

Which is nice.

Susan thought she was in for an easy ride when she dumped me and later, when I realised this, I wondered just how much any of it had meant to her. I also wondered at what expectations people had and why they bail so swiftly when those uncommunicated expectations are not met.

We’re simple and blunt creatures. If we ask, then we stand some chance of receiving. If we don’t ask, then how in the hell does anyone know what we want? That’s why we pray. There’s more to prayer than meets the eye. In order to pray, we need to work out what it is that we need. Not want. Want is a frivolous feeling. Want is the snivelling servant of urge. Then, once we’ve sussed what it is that we need, we have to articulate it. But that’s not the most important part, not by a long chalk. We absolutely have to mean it, and the only way that works is that we are completely invested in addressing that need so that what we’re really praying for is a little help along the way.

Think about it. Has anyone you know got a pile of answered prayers in their garage? Nope. That’s because when prayers are answered, they are already a part of a person’s life, and that life just gets better as a result. 

As the enormity of my new enforced status hit me, I burst into tears. Susan hadn’t seen this before. The only time my eyes had leaked was when I cut onions. I’d had nothing to provoke such a reaction during my relationship with her. Everything had been tickety-boo. We hit one rough patch and our love bug is off to the scrap metal merchant, baby!

I was just as crushed.

And so, I entered the Summer in a much changed state. I didn’t appreciate the favour Susan and my science teacher with his weaponised spittle had done me, nor the opportunities that were opening up to me thanks to these painful twists of fate. That took some time to sink in.

What I did understand was what counted, and that was the people around me. My family and my friends. They rallied around me and I learnt how to talk. Properly talk. About proper stuff. 

You see, now I’d been hurt, I wanted to understand. I wanted to get to grips with what it was that I was supposed to be doing with this life of mine. And yes, this was driven by a desire not to repeat the same mistakes again. Only there are times in your life. Big times. The very biggest of times. When no one tells you what it is that you did wrong. During the mess of the ensuing crisis, this seems unfair. But it isn’t. It’s necessary. After all, we only get out of life what we put in, so we have to do the work. If someone gave us the answers, then we’d go back to that person after we’d stuffed up again, blaming them instead of taking a long hard look at ourselves.

And that just would not do.

We have to look at ourselves because we’re built in a way that requires that self-reflection. We think we’re better than others, we also believe that we’re the best version of humanity yet. What exactly makes us better than our ancestors? Stuff. The material that surrounds and distracts us. How is that better? Can we honestly say that we know ourselves better than our ancestors did. 

I for one, don’t think we can.

We hide behind screens and indulge a fantasy. Our keyboards empower us to ‘say’ things that we would never utter to someone’s face. We play with the unreal because we’re too frightened to create something worthwhile. The meaning of our lives is eroded by the noise of so much that has nothing to do with us or the people around us.

I began to understand this as I spent the Summer of Eighty Eight in bits. As I talked to my friends and family, I kept on with the necessary work and I formulated my first life plan. I aimed at something worthwhile and I made damn sure it was worth something as I got closer and closer to it.

That Summer I began to grow up. 

Somewhere along the way I understood that growing up was just a part of life. Growing up is another way of saying learning. We never stop learning, or rather, if we do then we die a sort of death. 

Knowing this gives me much comfort. I know that I am not the finished article and that I never will be. That means I have farther to go and more living to do. That I will never stop on this journey of life. I will use every second of the time allotted to me and I will make sure that my time here matters.

And so I learnt to talk.

But it really all started to happen for me when I learnt to listen, but that’s a whole other story. Listening is far, far harder to master than talking. By a country mile and then some.

Imagine that! Listening to a being made of stars. That’s what we all are, and we have many, many stories to tell.