I cannot recall ever knowing not fear. Though I have learned to know it is to abandon it, but is the mere idea of something in our heads, that which elicits fear, the manifestation of that fear in the imagined sense? And does this then eventuate the physical manifestation of that fear? Impossible to say, isn't it? I, for one, do not remember the exact moment that fear of leaving, or rather the fear of being left, entered into my psyche but I do know how it has shaped me.
This existence, which I call my own, is not unusual in so much as it is usually mine. Or at least I had lead myself to consider that I am physically separate from this universe just as all living things are separate; that we just merely live in this universe. This, our empty physical space, which is in fact seemingly quite jammed packed with matter is wholly not our own. These atoms and molecules with their vast distances of emptiness somehow collaborate an existence that all of us share, but yet few feel the sharing and most just feel the separation, and if that feeling of oneness enters our perception it is merely fleeting and ethereal. That feeling of connectedness is so powerful that we turn it off at an early age so that we begin into a life of the empirical world. So that ultimately we can live in this physical world and not in the other realm. And so it is, our egos grow, our fears grow, and we are left without the tools to bring us back to oneness when it matters most; in adulthood. Those tools to get us operating on a higher plane, as a human and as a species.
To be faced with divorce is a disheartening prospect. This fear of being left by what I believed is a life partner was something that made me cling to legs as a child. It is in that childhood fear of being left which was somehow planted and now four decades later takes hold. There are of course the empirical results that pit one side against the other: financial ineptitude, unsupported career decisions, poor decision making. The objectivity of the later two allow for no rebuttal, other than my side of the story, and the first is categorical and grounds for anyone to back out. Fair enough. I do my best. We are not destitute nor even close to poverty. I am in debt. Which is a perennial perpetuation over the past decade. And thus sometimes ones best is simply not good enough. Left to my own devices I choose to spend more than I earn and that is an unmarketable character flaw.
Laying the foundations naked here is making sense of it; moving through it. Willing it away does not amount to anything of fruitful. So I give myself to the process.
There was a time when genuine love was there and nearly everything else vanished. Though we managed to burn the walls and bridges of our existence down around in the beginning I think was only because we had managed to make it to thirty before finding one another. However, cracks presented themselves early on, and straying of the heart was committed by the other half to the extent that an all out plead to not be left was laid grotesquely on display in the corner of some bedroom. The acquiescence of that plea was the divide that grew to gulf our relationship. Respect for me was never regained. Plea bargaining ones emotions is never going to end in mutual respect.
However, thus we forged ahead. Committed to family, or at least starting one. All the while the play of when is she going to attempt her leave for good.
I suppose had we managed to stay in the town we loved and had grown so embedded into then this might have been delayed from the now to the future. For the loss, if we are being completely honest, happened long before the now. As it has been said, my choice to pursue this change in career was the straw that broke the camels back. As if the camel was laden with hay from untold countless grievances that had been committed prior to. Really?
Honesty of ones emotions in a past tense is a fickle beast. Especially when the beast is fickle to begin with. Those who cannot emotionally stomach their choices as their own (barring a very lengthy philosophical discussion on the topic of free will) are inevitably bound to contort past perceptions to fit their current motives or emotives of the present. In fact, we are all guilty of this psychological protective coating we place on events of the past. It's just that some are more habitual in this practice than others.
Which, oddly enough, brings up, for me, ones inability to deal honestly with the emotions of ones youth. It then must be played out in our adulthood. Be it traumatic or benign. It all requires honesty and mental therapy. Though I digress, it is of pertinence. For it has become apparent to me that our reaching for materials, be them substances or actions for material pursuit, to fill an emotional void that left us early in life is what plagues the human psyche. I am as guilty as the next person, and so I hold no judgement for these habitual "necessities" as we may call them. These that sit below addiction but above apathy for substance or action. For some it's living beyond ones means, be it to appease someone or be it to appease ones ego. Or ingesting a substance that effects ones to consciousness. Again there are varying degrees, some deemed to be illegal, yet all these habitual rituals of ingesting or acting (in my case spending), if left unchecked take a toll on our psyche.
No comments:
Post a Comment