Finally

Finally a night alone. The rat race continues, everyone striving for more, better. It never seems to end, and worse they want me to be part of it. Being with people constantly doesn’t allow one the time to be oneself. We always have to be someone that conforms to one mold or another. We can never truly be when with others, who we know ourselves to be. We have to primp and prune, remain quiet, laugh, sometimes be forced to sing. God I hate karaoke. It is not that it is embarrassing for me because I have a good voice and sense of rhythm, but some, well need I say more. 

No, tonight I have unplugged the TV, put my phone on airplane mode, locked the door, an unfortunate but needed habit considering where I live, and am going to spend the evening being who I know myself to be. Just thinking that, gives my spirit a boost. I won’t have to explain my actions or thoughts, dissuade others from acting juvenile, or talking as though I cared. That is one of the things I find most annoying is having to pretend I care. Why, I ask myself, would anyone care about whether I care about something they are immersed in or not.

I have decided I am not going to attempt to read tonight as that would only take my mind, put a map or ax in it, and leave me laughing or crying, and would only have served the purpose I’m attempting to avoid. I need to reconcile what life is, and what part I play in it.

 I’m going to spend the night getting to know myself once again. I realize I might not like the person I believe myself to be, but I am at a stage where I need to find out. I can no longer go along to get along, no longer say and do what I am supposed to do for some arbitrary reason no one has ever explained to me. I am going to spend the evening with myself. Kind of like a first date. Getting to know someone, and deciding if you’ve seen enough and should move on, or settle in for the adventure. Just the thought of meeting myself, I find intriguing.

“You in there?”

Ignore the knocking. Ignore the voice. You know what he wants, or think they want, and you are in no position to give it to them, even if you wanted to. You are on a date. Don’t spend this opportunity looking for something better, before you’ve even gotten to know what you’ve got.

“I know you are in there. The mat is curled. The mat where you keep the key because you can never remember where you put it. I bought you that key chain you thought looks like a cats’ eye, but you won’t use it, so the mat-the key. The key is not here, so I can only assume it is in there with you. So that says to me that both of you are at home, and are just refusing to answer the door. Am I right?”

Pretend you didn’t hear any of that nonsense. Cats’ eye, key, you are going to spend the night looking out the window at the stars and deciding who you are, and what you are going to do with the rest of your life. 

It is cloudy, but then I know what the night sky looks like.  I don’t have to have it right in front of me to know it is out there. And I’m here, I know I am because I can see myself in the mirror. I’ve turned off all the lights, but the candle provides the right amount of light and ambiance for one to get to know oneself, I would think.

“If you don’t want to explain, that is fine. I just want to know if you are alright. Sometimes people say things they wished they hadn’t, and then, well it’s too late to take them back. No one is going to hold that against you. I’m sure Jeanine will realize the stress you’ve been under, and know that your actions were not really your actions, but your response to the pressure she herself has inflicted upon you. It should be her that apologizes to you.”

All I wanted to do is spend a night getting reconnected with myself, and who should come knocking but the angel of spirited words. Don’t listen to them, they are no more than illusions to trick you into remaining who you were, not who you are, or wish to become. It is always like this you know. They bring up some trivial incident, and you are defined by it. Remember third grade when Sister Annabelle wouldn’t let you go to the restroom and well…remember Sister Annabelle was a bitch, that doesn’t mean you were the reason she was disliked by everyone, you were just the recipient of her pent-up anger at probably having made the wrong decision about her vocation. That had nothing to do with you.

“Are you alright. I didn’t mean to imply you were…what I said about you having the disposition at times of a marshmallow over a campfire, that may have been too harsh of a metaphor given the circumstances. It’s just that you won’t tell or show me who you are. I know you are not the person you pretend to be. You have to learn to trust people more. Let them see the real you. If they don’t like what they see, well that has nothing to do with you. You can’t go through life pretending. It’s not good for you and it is not going to help you find out who you are.”

It is always so easy to look at something or someone and think you’ve got them figured out. And what do we really know about anyone for certain? We’ve got appearances, assumptions, and we take those observations, and build someone’s entire life around them. Most times I would venture a guess, not even the right life. But we do it over and over, and have it done to us over and over, and then someone knocks on your door and tells you someone made a mistake. What they saw, what they think they knew, was wrong. 

I’m not entirely sure I wanted to know that. If that is true then I could be wrong about who or what I am or want to be, as I know myself primarily by what I do, and how I see the world. I’ve never asked myself if I like what I see, who I am. I just took it for granted, I had to.

“If you are dead in there, I just want you to know that we care. Do what you want, be who you want, but remember we are all in this together, even when alone.”

That bastard!

“Coming.”