"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me."
Walt Whitman (1819-92)
"When I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break."
Akhenaton (d. c.1354 BC)
And now, the current weather, from some random person we pulled off the street:
Friday, August 29, 2003
Fixing a Puzzle Blindfolded
rue Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English rewe, from Old English hrEow; akin to Old High German hriuwa sorrow
Date: before 12th century
1 : Regret, sorrow
2 : How I feel about many things that have happened.
I feel forsaken.
When I look over the last two or three years of my life, I feel like I am seeing a puzzle that I had carefully assembled smashed into pieces. The part that bothers me the most is that I truly in my heart feel like it has not been my fault at all. It was the meds they had me on and the way I acted under their influence. I could not have helped it.
Perhaps its the time of life I am in, perhaps it is a reaction to the illness I was diagnosed with, perhaps its both, but I find myself looking at where I am standing lately and not being pleased with it at all. I used to feel confident, and really felt that no task was beyond what I could accomplish. I now feel mortally wounded inside, dying a little each day, a bit more maimed each time I examine myself.
I am trying as hard as I can to put my puzzle back together, but I'm blindfolded and can't see the pieces.
I feel sorrow.
My first urge is to give until it hurts, to piece myself out and by doing that to somehow reclaim what I've lost. I've always believed that if you just give enough, things will work out, that God will somehow honor that self sacrifice. I am now learning, at 44, that it does not necessarily work that way. Maybe it would work if the problem was selfishness, but its not. The problem is the roller coaster I was on, and the fact that you can't live your life backwards.
I did not mean to be on the roller coaster, I didn't ask for it, and while I was riding it I wasn't me. I can't seem to get people to understand that. And now there are walls between me and people I was formally friends with. And I take it so very personally.
I feel my heart breaking.
Because it wasn't me, can't you understand me? I'm still in here, I'm the same. I care about everyone. I want to make a difference. Just like always.
I want people to want me as a friend. I want my family to want to be around me. I want my wife to want to be close to me. And it just feels like I have lost it all, like it was smashed and I can't put it back together, I can't see the pieces to fix them.
I am good and I am true and I want to give of myself so much. But thats not enough, is it? I thought it was, I always thought it was. But its not. Maybe it never was enough.
I can't see the puzzle pieces. I can't figure out how to fix it back.
I want to believe I am more worthwhile than this, I want to believe that I did not have it wrong all this time. I just can't see that reflection in the people close to me. And I believe I would, if it was there.
I feel regret.
The ghosts of what might have been haunt the corridors of what I wished for. I had this picture in my mind of who I was, who I really was inside, and no one can see it.
I am in here.
Can anyone see me?
The rollercoaster is tattooed on my soul.
It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), 'Of Human Bondage', 1915
