What Power Struggle?

really though i never really had a reason to enter the fray, things just seemed to work this way, and i am just about as unchanging as Coyote hisdamnself. man, you might bring out the wild howling, or the manic laughter, or the omnivorous glutton, or the hunted predator, you might be able to twist the image a little, but it's still the same tufted tail, the same wild eyes, the same twisted soul. unlike Coyote, i could apologize, but i don't think i will. because i wasn't made to fit a bastion of order. man was not made for the Sabbath, but vice versa. (sentences like that are part of why i love my language so much. geez, only you, English. only you.) i am crazy because that's what i am. yes, i will try to handle it, i will try to keep things a little bit safe, and i will damn well apologize with every ounce of sincerity in my heart when the fucked-up parts of me go too far and i hurt someone, but... this is what it is, man. i am what i am.

Whatever is not an expression of apathy, it's the eye of the storm.

To Whom It May Concern, and with all due respect,

My attitude is not defined by the speech-pattern of apathetic dismissal, "Whatever."

My attitude is defined by the final word with which I choose to leave your company, and most people's-- that is to say, "Peace." Which is, in case you didn't know, a shortened form of the full farewell, which is to say, "Peace be with you."

Peace be with you. Peace unto you, and your loved ones, and peace be unto this world, this torn and scarred world, this home of our fragile human race, which is within our power to make a heaven or a hell.

My attitude is in the songs I sing along roads and under echoing bridges and to the open night sky, songs like Sunday Bloody Sunday, songs that fan the flames of my soul, lyrics that grip my heart in a vise. My attitude is in the lines "Where you live should not decide / Whether you live or whether you die" because that is where my passion lies.

I say things like "Whatever," I shrug, I grin and laugh it off often, because my mind is occupied with stories, with dreams, with love and hope and fire and pain and longing, and whether it's the date or the initials that come first on an invoice doesn't even scratch the surface of any of those things. I won't say I couldn't care less, because on some level I do care-- I shrug it off because the mistake's been made, and file away the information for next time. Whether I remember it or not depends on other factors.

Someday, I won't have to walk into a store, pick up an object, and wonder if it was made by hired workers or forced slavery. Someday, enough people will care, enough people will care and think and speak and work, and slavery will be eradicated. Someday, children will stop dying from diseases cured centuries in the past, and people will care as much for the starving continents away as the starving in the slums of the next city over. Someday, this world will cease to be a hell for most of the people in it.

I repeat this to myself at least once a day. I have to. I force myself to believe it as I speak it, to see it in my mind, a world without a hell that could so easily be prevented, because if I start to believe that it won't happen, it hurts, so bad I want to cry.

When I put the earbuds back in my pocket, and I shake the snow or the dust or the rainwater off of my shoes and jacket and walk in, I shake off the passion and fury and sorrow that wars within me, because if I didn't have walls to put it up behind, it would consume me. I'd be impossible to put up with-- more than I already am, that is. But it doesn't go away. Know that. It doesn't go away ever, and I never stop caring, and I am never, ever apathetic. I'm just distant.

Peace, dude.

So much for that, then.

For a very long time, I have been saying that I will not have a romantic relationship because I am afraid of hurting someone, which I see as inevitable in the course of a relationship in a relationship containing a schizophrenic. Guess what?

I lied. I am afraid of having a romantic relationship because:
I’m afraid of opening up to someone
I have serious self-esteem issues
I don’t trust most people that much at all
and countless other very normal and not-related-to-madness issues! (oh, but the madness issues are still there; they’re just not the whole truth)

I really thought that admitting that to myself was supposed to be a big huge step, a big huge relief, and taking a weight off my mind. The truth! Sets you free!

Yeah, except that that passage is consistently misused and taken out of context. (John, chapter 8) 31: Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
32: And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
33: They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?
34: Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.
35: And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever.
36: If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

Anyway, my point was that, despite admitting to myself that truth, I am still just as lonely, and just as closed-off and unlikely to have a relationship. Bah! Bah, I say! Eh. Maybe someday I will meet someone who is as crazy as I am, and it will be beautiful and wonderful and love, but for now, I think that despite realizing that I’m not incapable of a relationship, just unwilling, I’d rather be lonely than dating someone who I don’t actually like or love.

Pointless post is pointless.

Because I am tired of masks.

Because I grow tired of addressing different parts of my soul when I find myself with a new set of people; because I wish to be who I am, and no other; because, as I have said in other places, the inner wordsmith, the writer in me, is the most honest part of my soul. For all these reasons, and others which I cannot name even to myself, in conscious thought, I will try now to say what I feel to be the truth. Would that I had the conviction of C. S. Lewis, the wit of Terry Pratchett, the lyrical flow of Guy Kay—but that is another point altogether.

I do not, cannot, and will never be able to believe that religion, Christianity, human belief in God, is predictable, or even convenient. Again, I wish very much that I had the skill of Lewis to explain myself, but it is not given to me to speak and debate eloquently on subjects which I hold so close to my heart. My point is simply, this: how can love, belief in perfect love, in forgiveness, in redemption, be an easy thing, a convenient thing—a predictable thing? I remember, ages ago, in a long and very, very drawn-out debate, someone claiming to believe in Christianity, but not being able to accept someone else paying her debts for her. In my self-centered, unsympathetic state, I scorned her, saying loftily that that was “the whole point” of Christianity, that there was no belief if you did not accept that sacrifice. In my defense, I was only saying what I had been taught. It is so easy to put down weakness in others—so much easier when you’re trying to hide the same weakness in yourself.

It was—and is—so, so hard for me to accept the very idea of unconditional love, let alone forgiveness, redemption. For a very, very long time I went through phases of horrible, horrible guilt that would not go away. Guilt for stupid, tiny things, things I didn’t always even have control over. Friends would tell me endlessly that repentance, true repentance, was final, ended it, should end the guilt and the self-blame. What was my answer? Obviously, I had not repented fully enough. (Hah. I was about to write about how this little phase ended when I found out that one of my best friends went through the same thing, but that would be a lie. It made things a bit easier, but end? Hah.) My point is that believing in eternal forgiveness, unconditional love, is most definitely not the first leap of human consciousness.

Even leaving out that which may be an oddity in me and many I have known, that lingering guilt and self-blame, even leaving that—what human would willingly say to their enemy, “Kill me now, and you are damned, but if you repent, thirty days hence, you will be forgiven and absolved”? What woman, what man, would so easily accept the concept of eternal forgiveness, seventy times seven, towards their brother, their killer, their enemy? I cannot speak for all religion—I would never claim that responsibility, or that right. But deny me that. Tell me that unconditional forgiveness, unconditional love—the preaching of this as extended to all fellows, to be more Christlike—is predictable of humanity. Tell me that it is convenient to forgive a brother each and every betrayal he levels against you—or a sister. That is the core of Christianity—love. That is what all the Church is built on, believe it or not.

We are human, we are corruptible and predictable and prone to every conceivable weakness at some point in our lives. But the spirit within us is not. No one in this world could ever make me believe that any part of that is wrong. Perhaps it makes more scientific sense to say that enough evil could damn anyone, in the end. But a repentance of that evil? Would that balance it out—the will, the will inside to balance out any evil done? I could not say; I do not claim to understand metaphysics. But never say to me that unconditional love and forgiveness is a predictable, convenient excuse for human evils. Can it be used for such? Of course. Anything can be used and twisted for evil; someone determined enough to hurt and harm will use any excuse and reason in their power to do so. But it taints them, in the end, not the good that they have ill used. A fire cannot be evil, even if it is used to burn down a house. That’s a poor example, but the point stands, I think.

It’s been a long time since I made such an argument as this. My original intent was to tie it back to my original point about masks, and anarchism, or whatever other facets of my heart which I had at some point taken up and hence found false, but continued to follow. To any belief I have held, any philosophy I have fallen from, I say this. When a belief, a philosophy tells me that all are equal and free, I will agree, whole-heartedly. When it tells me that truth to an inner self should come before law, I will rejoice. When I am told to be angry, to hate, to betray my conscience, I will refuse. When I am told that God is dead, that religion is useful insofar as it aids that philosophy, that morality or ethics are an excuse or a weakness, that conscience is a hindrance, I will take my leave.

Why did I write this? In part, to answer a discussion and debate with a friend. In part because, as I said, I am tired of masks. I am tired of putting on my carefree anarchist face when I go to Food Not Bombs, my detatched philosopher face when someone challenges something I believe in, my selfless Christian face when I'm talking to certain friends, or on certain subjects, and God only knows how many others. I'm sick of it. This is who I am. I'm a Christian. I'm not an Anarchist, or a Republican, or a Democrat, or a Liberal, or a Conservative, or whatever other political label it's possible to wear. It is not given me to be a philosopher, or a singer, or an orator, or a philanthropist, or whatever else. I am a Christian; I believe in charity, not in the common definition of giving money to those you feel deserve and need it, but in the old definition of feeling-- or believing in-- love for all humankind, Just Because; I believe in conscience over law, but I do not believe in lawlessness; I believe in order over chaos, but that order should be just. What more shall I say? I am tired of masks. I no longer believe that I need any worldly label or face or party to hide behind. I need no excuse to be who I am.

LAUGHTER, laughter is the best medicine! :D

I guess the long and short of it, or at least somewhere between those two varying points, is that I envy The Comedian. In some of my more lucid moments, when things really do make sense, I can retreat into dark humor, somewhere between Kurt Vonnegut and Edward Blake, getting the joke and somehow it’s beyond horror. When you look at this entire fucking world, what can you do but laugh? It’s all a joke. Somehow, when I try to explain that to most people, most decent, thoughtful, right-minded people, they are horrified. They really should be. It’s a horrible joke. And yet, honestly, what else can you do but laugh? I laugh because it’s easier than crying and harder than jumping off a cliff, which is the only other solution to this world, when you start thinking about it. Just thinking about this country is a joke. I listen to Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, for that matter Larry King or whatever their liberal counterparts are, and I laugh. What else can you do? Everything they say sounds absurd to me. Politics, the study of how fucked up humanity really is. Either you laugh, or you cry. I wrote a poem starting with that once, but I didn’t even understand, back then. I only started to understand this my junior, and senior year, when I’d walk out of third period, with our control-freak math teacher having just tried to attack me again, unable to do anything but laugh. That was when my emotions started to shut down, and I started laughing instead of crying.

My saving grace, I guess, is that as much as I laugh, as hard, as wide as my smile is, it still hurts, underneath. It’s gotten to the point where laughter itself hurts, most of the time, there’s this squeezing pain around my chest when I laugh, often. The Comedian, I think, became so hard to the world that laughing was all he knew how to do, that suffering and pain never even touched his mind anymore, except as part of the joke. I still want to change things. I still hurt when I see others hurt, and I still hurt when I laugh. I just don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop laughing, and I’m not sure I want to. Like I said, laugh or cry in this world, and say what you will about the healing of tears, etc, but laughter, laughter doesn’t produce mucus in your body either.

Get it?

Maybe I should join the Army and go to Iraq so I can be the next Kurt Vonnegut if I don’t get killed.

Oh Noes!

what if my mother was right and i am, in fact, a demon? or a doppleganger inhabited by a demon? somehow led to believe that i am or was a real person, just waiting for the right moment to snap and become a bloodthirsty monster? oh, wait, i already am a bloodthirsty monster. right.

what if it IS all a conspiracy?

:O

Poking fun at my own delusional self, or actually quite worried? YOU decide. : D [with black buttons for eyes.]

Nothing to Say

I don't know if it's wise to post this here. But I figure like I should post it somewhere, somewhere public, somewhere where I will see it whenever I look through the archives, and remember, this is why you fucking listen to your conscience, this is why anarchy is bullshit, for all it's a pretty picture on paper. Everything looks nice if you have the right people talking about it. I'm not falling for this philosophy bullshit again.

I feel used, betrayed, lied to. Rational or no, that’s how I feel. Now, that would be bad enough, really. But I also feel guilty, horrible, like scum of the earth. So it’s… hmmm.

A friend stole from her workplace. In her mind, I believe, because the owner was a jerk, because the store was a part of the hierarchy she rebels against and hates (as do I, as do most people in one way or another), because she wasn’t treated well there, it was justified. This, I would not judge her for, though it goes against my personal code. Part of my code of life is not judging others by my own morals, ethics, what have you. It’s hard, but I believe it’s right. But, but, but, things are never that simple. She took food that would’ve been thrown away and distributed it, through us, to needy and homeless people in the city, along with the donations the group collected from supermarkets. I suppose if I had paid attention to any sort of detail at all, I would’ve known that she had no authority to do so. But she eventually left, and was subsequently banned from the store, for whatever reason, I didn’t pry. She told us we could continue to take expired food; we did. Start to present, this was about a year.

Yesterday, a new woman stopped us, called the manager, who told us that the man in charge of deli food had said no “in the past” to expired food being taken. Knowing the man, knowing that he’s been taken advantage of in the past, and knowing that he and our friend had never gotten along, I rather understood. Also, I’d always been fairly certain that the owner of the store didn’t know about the whole situation. I figured the chef had a newborn baby to take care of, his job was on the line, I wouldn’t press the issue. The woman told me to take it up with him on Monday. We left without food, except what I’d brought from my garden, some green beans and some basil, as well as a melon from my friend's brother. It was fine, there was plenty of supermarket produce, and we helped cook up a meal and handed everything out at the park (except the green beans, which didn’t find a place). I type up an e-mail explaining the situation to the entire group, and then spend the entire night worrying about the chef, whether or not he will hate me, if he will understand, if he will think I’ve lied to him or used him or tried to deceive him. This is irrational, but I like the guy, a lot, and don’t want to hurt him, or for him to be angry at me, only partially because he is sometimes moody and the very idea of him angry scares the shit out of me, partly emotion-wise, partly just because.

Monday morning, I wake up significantly pre-dawn, continue worrying for a few more hours in bed, and eventually get up and get coffee and see my dad off. With my little brother in tow (the library was in the works for after I got everything sorted out), I headed off to the plaza in which he and I work and the friend formerly worked, worrying the entire way, of course. I head into the store, and run into (not literally) the grocery manager, a man who I don’t know very well, but has a reputation from plenty of friends for being a mellow, very nice, very generous guy. He tells me that the owner and manager are angry, the weekend was bad, they never condoned the food donations at all, and are contacting the group over it, and so on. I wince, tell him I am sorry but understand; he is not happy either. My little brother pipes up “But it’s expired food—” I tell him to shut up. The grocery manager tells me that the deli food was not, in fact, all expired, which shuts me the hell up, too. I am stunned, shell-shocked, apologize, and leave the store a very, very confused person indeed.

After talking to my very good friend who I work with, my brother takes off to the library, I am stricken with conscience and guilt (far too late, I fear), and return to the grocery store to apologize to the chef. He is behind the deli lunch counter, asks me what’s wrong, had no idea I was involved in any way with the goings-on. Tells me he does not blame me, that it is really the friend’s fault, she has an attitude problem, she should’ve told us, I swallow. I am still her friend. I will not judge her. He says not to worry, they will take care of the judging for me. She was banned, you know. …She was what? Oh. Oh, um. I’m really really really really sorry. He tells me not to worry. I tell him I promise I never would’ve taken food that wasn’t expired; he knows that, don’t worry. He doesn’t think the manager or owner know about my involvement, he definitely didn’t, I am still welcome, don’t worry, just don't mention it to either of them. I feel like shit.

Fuck anarchy, fuck anarchism, fuck the higher good and high ethics and the greater cause and all the bullshit that’s kept me all high and mighty all last year. Fuck it all. I let ideology blind me to my own conscience, and that’s a mistake I won’t make again. I can’t believe I was so stupid to ignore everyone in my life who warned me about idealism, and living outside of reality. The worst part is, I knew they were right. But I figured, maybe someday I’ll look back on this stage of my life and laugh at the foolish kid I was, or maybe I’ll figure out a way to live by my conscience and make it work. I didn’t think I’d wind up stealing from someone I care about, or, for that matter, stealing full stop.

I walked to the library, feeling hurt, angry, stupid, guilty. I found my little brother, laughing under his breath at Stephen Colbert’s book, and dug up a Terry Pratchett book for myself, and proceeded to get lost in the life of Samuel Vimes, Night Watch. Good book. It was five-thirty before I put it down, having seen my brother off some time ago. I called my best friend and told her as much of the story as I could, in as much detail as I could muster, having called my sister on the way to the library, seen my other best friend at the store where I work during the whole ordeal, and having decided (after all this) to e-mail my other best friend the story later on. Then I walked back to the plaza, buying a bottle of glue and applying for a job on the way there, and also stopping for a bite and writing this: Fuck anarchism, fuck the greater good, fuck higher ideals and all the bullshit that comes along. Whenever I get suicidal, I take two options. One, look around, decide the world, life, is too beautiful, amazing; two, it’s the easy way out and I’d let people down. But right now I’m finding it hard to care about either. I concluded that if life was about conscience, appreciating beauty, working hard and loving with all you’ve got and so on, I could take it. I could take heartbreak, pain, physical and emotional, but I can’t take all the moral-gray-area bullshit that comes along. I can’t take fucking philosophy.

Anyway, I got to the store where I currently work as my friend was closing up, accidentally scaring the shit out of him in the process, and went with him to both stores he needed to go to, me radiating apathy and depression, and him trying to cheer me up in various ways, in varying degrees of success. As we left the second grocery store, I got a call from my sister telling me that my brother, a drug dealer who my dad had kicked out at the start of the summer, had broken into the house, and she’d found lights on all over, and the black plastic hat that had held about four months’ worth of my pocket change (at least ten bucks, probably closer to twenty) empty on my dad’s bed. I thanked her for the news, hung up. Walked home laughing, about as painfully close to tears as I ever want to be, laughing and unable to stop. I stopped in the park for a while, saw a bat flying around, apologized to my God and for what I did to both the owner and the chef and God only knows who else, lied in a tree and wished for death, jumped out and walked home, where I found that my brother had also taken with him about two meals’ worth of food, and kicked in the basement door. My dad surmises that it is me he truly hates, and I do know this to be the case.

But all I could do was laugh, figuring how can I hate him? What I’ve done is so much worse.

And that is why I feel like shit right now.

Related Thoughts in the Stream of an Unfortunate Consciousness

(On humanity: I’m not a fan. )

We just watched Watchmen, I’m a little tired of this all. How do you justify a liking to the Comedian when in all appearance experiences you are a femine-something? I don’t, don’t, don’t. Don’t understand; not myself, not this, not that, not you for sure. I always seem to like the psychos. Yeah, I liked Rorsach too, the book and movie version. I liked both. Maybe like’s not the right word. I liked the Joker, if that’s the word. I remember reading this thing about how “(I can’t put enough fucking quotes around this word)Gifted” children, after seeing a movie, say, Fiddler on the Roof, would not be ready to go out for ice cream; they would still be wrapped up in the characters, torn apart by their emotional immersion in the drama of it, in a way of sorts somehow; “Semi-“Gifted”” children would be ready to go out for ice cream but only if they could talk about the lighting and the stagecraft and the filming techniques and the so on and so forth and so on, so, so, so I kind of claimed the second category (even though I think there was a third before you get to the gosh-damned lucky normal kids), because in my experience that was a bad thing, when you cried when the character died because even though he was a villain you understood him? Or when you cheered or clapped or whatever the fuck.

I don’t understand why I’m here.
That’s not really true.
Yes it is, though. On the greater level of the question, heady philosophical question, etc.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,oh oh oh oh oh oh fuck this fuckfuckfuck.

Stories

the thing is, i don't know if i want a normal life. i don't think i even want a normal job. i don't want to get rich selling juice-- or even sharing juice. i don't want an excellent business opportunity, i don't want to have a LIFE, in any sense of the word. i don't. want. anything. at least, not anything like that. and yet, you people continue to tell me that it is Necessary, and that i should Compromise, or at least look beyond whatever stupid world i'm living in in my head (okay, you haven't said it like that, but i think you want to, at least a few of you, a few times), and try to get some kind of stability before i try to be an Artist. here's the thing though.

I don't WANT to be an Artist. Or, really, a Writer. (I want to meet a very specific writer sometimes, but that's different.)

I want to tell stories. That's all, in one way. In another way, I want to LIVE, to feel the salt on my face in every way possible, to climb mountains like a goat like i did when i was young, to see forever the dappled sunlight on the forest floor, to hear forever the brook singing over rocks, to lose myself in the thunderstorms, spontaneous and forever. but mostly, i want to tell stories. I want to take all the characters floating around in my head, and all the landscapes that exist a thousand worlds over, and all the meadows and flowers and faires and sprites and genies and gargoyles and assassins and thieves and shepherds and everything. i want to live, live all of it forever, and then come back and tell people.

and that's often why i don't mingle well, or why i can't be coaxed to dinners and parties and things, and why you meet me in the mist and the dark, with no good reason for being there, and why i might choose a notebook over a car. because mingling, gossip about folks who aren't there, laughter, light, takes me away from the Stories, mine or someone else's, and life as it should be pales in contrast with life i want to live.

there is a part of a book i read that says something like "The thing about stories is, they don't mean a damn if there's nobody listening," which sometimes i kind of agree with. I want to go to the edge of the world, the end of life, and then come back and tell the stories to people who want to hear them. And it seems like that's not an acceptable goal, these days. And that saddens me.

I don't have so much a vendetta against dragons, these days.

Sometimes it annoys me how much he’s right, that he sees so much. The thing is, I know what’s there, I just get really good at blocking it out of my mind, and he doesn’t bother with that. But I guess that’s what friends are for—they cut through the bullshit, and see past the fronts you’ve put up, against yourself or the outside world. The half-hearted excuses you use to keep yourself from trying for happiness don’t hold up in any amount of light, and a real friend is someone who won’t let you hide that kind of shit in the shadows. That’s something I’ve always thought of, when I see those stupid “A good friend… but a BEST friend…” stickers/pins/t-shirts/bumper stickers at those stupid stores.

A good friend will laugh with you. A best friend teaches you to laugh at yourself. A good friend will find you the right parties, a best friend will skip the parties with you. A good friend is someone you can talk to, but a best friend is someone you can be quiet with. All that good shit. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that it's not the physical things, even the physical actions, that define a friendship. It's not even, really, how much you can trust them (it is, though), it's something else, I don't know. A best friend is someone you can drop the mask to, or someone who forces you to drop the mask to yourself.

Honestly, I don't like the label 'best friend,' and am using it here out of convenience. In my mind, it conveys the image of cheap jewelry in the shape of a puzzle piece, of giggles and doing each other's hair, and I know that's a stupid prejudice. When I say 'best friend,' I mean just friend, someone who matters to you... more than most people? I don't know. Friends. You know what I mean. I think.

My closest friends don’t so much influence me as they free me from the influences of the rest of the world. I feel more myself around them, and that has good and bad consequences, pleasant and unpleasant both. I see faults, things I hate about myself, more when I’m talking to a best friend than when I’m alone, than when I’m with anyone else. I unveil more of myself, which means I’m more easily hurt. But the few close friends I have, I wouldn’t trade for anything.

It’s late, and I should probably go to sleep or something, especially since I kind of want to be rid of this lingering fever. But it’s not often I decide to listen to a U2 album, full through, and I’m on the third now, in descending order by year. (How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb) Something about an album isn’t complete unless it’s listened to full through, in order. I don’t know why. Certainly songs can be appreciated on their own, and in a different, more individual light, without the context of their album covers. Holistically, though, it’s like… Like looking at the pages of a sketchbook. They can be appreciated on their own, but if you look at them altogether, there’s a bigger image.

Anyway.

A Narrow Escape

Pretty much every attribute, physical behavior, and aspect of my identity has been commented on by those around me, at this point in my life. I’m serious here—people have been commenting for years, on little abnormalities they notice. My smile, my laugh, my eyes, my walk, my run (this was not to my face, and I did not find out for months afterward—but still), my manner of speech and the things I talked about, my tone of voice, my thought patterns, whenever they showed, my habit of walking at night, my taste in food, my hair, my clothing, my whistle, the way I hold my head—literally, everything. And, for a long time, I tried to fix that. I tried to hide whatever seemed abnormal, I tried to fit the standard, I tried, really hard, to fit in. I changed my laugh, I smiled as naturally as I thought I could, I only talked about what I thought other people would care about, I didn’t share my thoughts most of the time, for fear I’d scare people away, I seared my tongue with heated metal to keep myself from whistling. I tried to retrofit my personality, my identity, into a society that ultimately had refused me entry.

It didn’t work. To some extent, I gained a little more access to people, people talked to me more, but it didn’t last. In some ways, the harder I tried to be normal, the worse of a fit I was; in some ways, I simply couldn’t do it. This was also around the time of life that schizophrenia began to appear in my mind, so that didn’t help. But most of all, the effort it took to hide whatever wasn’t fitting in about myself was just too much—it hurt, in different ways, and I was lonelier behind my mask than I had been when people scorned my true face. I couldn’t do it. But I tried, for probably a year, maybe a year and a half, before that became apparent, and I gave up.

Now, this fringe life is hardly easy. I’m lonely, sometimes, when people avoid me or treat me as though I wasn’t really… the same. Which, I guess, I’m not. But honestly, I prefer this isolation, with a few close friends who accept me, to being widely accepted for trying to be someone I’m not. It gets lonely, yes, but like I said, the loneliness from forcing myself into a mold I did not fit was far, far worse.

Thus, this is what I chose. I chose to allow myself to grow into this person, this fidgety, manically grinning kid who wanders around at night, who carries a fist-sized rock in one pocket, whose smile creeps out so many. I get lonely sometimes; sometimes I really wish I had someone who understood this, someone who would talk to me, someone who would love me despite—or, more accurately, because of— the crazy, stupid, twisted parts of me—even the parts that I still hide. But the thing is, I have a few friends who understand, who accept and love me for who I am, and idealistic or not, there’s still a part of me that holds out hope that someday, someone else will do the same.

Anyway, it’s still better—perhaps because nothing could possibly be worse—than trying to go through life with my identity tucked safely behind a mask of normalcy, slowly atrophying, leaving me no more than the empty shell that I once pretended to be.

Light beneath our masks

So, on trust and relationships, and the most basic thing connecting the two that I can think of—this begins with an anecdote, as do many such ideas. You see, today, I was talking to my friend and boss—and my other boss. I had a pocketful of pens, which had been my reason for going out, and my friend was ‘breaking them in,’ because he is a bit of an artist and, like many creative-minded people, cannot resist an assortment of artistic tools. And they are pretty nice pens, and there were a few different colors. Anyway, the conversation went in a few different directions, and stuff, and the manager wound up making some snide side comment about my friend having too much power over me.

So I was thinking about it. This conversation doesn't have too much to do with the post, but it has enough to get me thinking--and it sparked this chain of thought that I’ve had in the back of my mind for years.

All relationships—at least, all positive relationships—are founded on trust. You cannot be friends with someone without granting them a measure of trust. As your friendship grows and you grow closer, the measure of trust grows as well. Obviously, this is just as important with romantic relationships as it is with platonic, but I don’t think it’s more important with either, just as both are necessary. (Our society tends to place romantic relationships on a much higher level, concerning importance, than any platonic relationships, and this bothers me. But that’s another topic for another day.) But anyway, the point is that in order to have a relationship with someone, you must trust them, with something. To have a closer relationship with someone, you trust them with more.

As a friend grows closer, especially when you’re growing up together—but any age, really—you begin to tell them more. At first, it’s only small things. Common interests, hobbies, small things you share with many people. Then, as you find them worthy of this trust and you begin to care more for them, the relationship grows. You begin to talk about deeper things, things important to you—things that matter, things that you care about. They do the same, and the trust and bond grow stronger. As the friendship grows, so does the trust between you.

Here’s the tricky part. Trust grants power. When someone learns something about you, it grants them a measure of power over you. In my mind, this makes the point of trust even stronger, more fundamentally important. It is the trust you grant in people. When you tell your friend about that new crush you have on him or her, you’re not only trusting that they won’t tell anyone, but you’re trusting them with a measure of power over you. This is the key to my revelation: The more people know about you, the more power they have over you. Every piece of information about yourself, no matter how trivial, is a chink in your mask, something that makes you vulnerable. Friends can use this against you. They won’t, because you are friends—likely as not, you have that same power. But it’s not an alliance; it’s not about keeping the secrets, maintaining the friendship, because you have an edge on each other. That’s what makes it friendship. You trust them not to hurt you with the power you grant them. The more you trust them, the more power they have over you. But you don’t care, because you care about them, and you know that they are worthy of your trust.

The above conversation excerpt isn’t really an example of this theme. It’s just the spark that led to this train of thought. But it still stands. The more you trust someone—for instance, trusting a friend’s word without question—the more power they have over you. That’s a scary thought, if you think about it. Think how many friends you have whose word you trust. Every friend, every loved one, ever person who you’ve given access to the person behind your mask, has a measure of power over you, has a way to hurt you.

Then think about why you gave them that power, whether or not you meant to. The deeper example, the more true example, for me, is something that happened a while ago. Someone surprised me online with this quote: “And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own head” And didn’t tell me who they were. We talked for a long time, about society, the wilderness, the way civilization has turned its back on the reality of life, etc.

Through that one conversation, without even knowing who he was, I gave him more power over me than many of my friends have. But sometimes, it’s necessary, to drop the mask as far as you can and bare your open, beating heart to the winds of the world, and the searing life around you.

I’ll close with this, my most well-worn quote, from C. S. Lewis, which sums this up pretty well.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”