Damn! Out of Glue!

            For so much of our lives we hold ourselves back, hold back the feelings of inadequacy, hold back the fears of isolation, hold back the pains of rejection, hold back everything about ourselves that we are sure will make us completely unlovable, unapproachable, and all around undesirable. As a result, we essentially float around in orbs of society made fuzz that reflects what’s within us in order to appease everything that is outside of us.

            I mean, it’s not all bad. The truth is, sometimes we need something to hold in all the crazy that threatens to lash out at unsuspecting passerbys on a daily basis. Unfortunately, attempting to contain something that overwhelmingly powerful is a tiring and ultimately impossible job.  Inevitably, the crazy is unleashed in one massive spurt that, like Mount Vesuvius, threatens to forever encase the Pompeii of our lives in a molten tomb of destruction.

            Of course, this only succeeds in making us work harder and harder to shield the rest of the world from our volcanic insanity and retreat farther and farther into that shell of society’s expectations. So, we continue to hate ourselves because we are too afraid of what the world will think of us and then we hate ourselves even more for hating ourselves. We exist in this vicious cycle of self-loathing and self-deprecation thinking all the while we are protecting ourselves from something that in actuality has already succeeded in scaling our well-made walls and like the Mongols wreaked havoc on what lies within.

            Who we are becomes whom we define ourselves as. We choose which parts of ourselves get exposed to the world and which parts are hidden completely. We choose ourselves like we would choose a meal at a fast food restaurant, picking the combinations that work the best for a specific situation or specific needs. Now, I’m not saying that this is wrong. I mean, the truth is, it doesn’t make us any less ourselves, it just makes ourselves something less.

            As we seek to hide our true colors from a world we are afraid of blinding, we find ourselves unraveling a web within our own consciousness until we eventually find that there is nothing left. I guess we hope that before it gets to that point we will find someone to stop us, to tell us that it’s okay to show the whole picture, but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, you wind up at the end of the tapestry and all you have to show for yourself is a pile of yarn on the floor. 

            The truth is, all we want is to find someone to hold us together, to replace that orb of impersonal societal fuzz with something solid and protective, something to remind us that what’s inside isn’t wrong or dirty, but rather it is makes us who we are, both the best and the worst parts of us. We all yearn to find that person who doesn’t contain the crazy for fear of the explosion, but because they know how to deal with it before you fall apart. We all long to find another human being who will cuddle with us when we feel exposed, patch us up when we feel about to break, and take our hand even in those moments when we feel like some leper that nobody could bear to touch.

            It all comes back to companionship, seeking the glue from someone else’s bottle because you can no longer trust your own will make the pieces stick. The sad truth, though, is that sometimes you wind up at the craft store and the last bottle of glue has already been bought. It’s in those moments that you pull out the duct tape or even the scotch roll of friends and family, hoping to find something strong enough that can temporarily put you back in place until the glue finally gets restocked.

           

            XOXO

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