My life is a lie.
There. The words are right there, ready to jump off the page and slap me in the face. I know as I begin this journey that it won’t be pretty…it will ramble backward and forward. It will be incoherent and it will be filled with lies, not on purpose but because I will try to trick you as I have tricked and lied to myself. It will be concise, purposeful and painful. It will be a contradiction and a reconciliation. It will be boring, sad, exciting and joyful. But most of all it will be the truth…my truth as I see it, as I have lived it and as I come to terms with it. So here we go…better grab a coffee or a drink…this is going to take awhile.
Oprah, Tony Robbins, Joel Osteen, hell, even some of my Facebook friends all tell me I am worthy. Worthy of what, I wonder? A good life? Happiness? Good health? Wealth? A guilt free existence? A parent’s love? Ahhhhhhhh, there we have it! The proverbial ‘blame your Mother syndrome’. I haven’t really. Blamed my Mother I mean. Well, not consciously (first lie, but we’ll get into that later).
So here I am, sixty one years old, trying to make sense of it all. Find your purpose. That’s what all the gurus tell me. Once you discover your purpose, all aspects of your life will fall into place…in an orderly fashion, in tune and perfect harmony with the universe. I’d call bullshit, but I’m afraid to. What if they’re right? Part of me believes it…has tried to live it, but somewhere the doubt needles me. It taunts me, like a damn chicken looking for worms….peck, peck, peck. Wearing me down until the positive persona I have worked so hard at for the benefit of the world begins to crack. So I retreat, making excuses for anything and everything so I can continue to hide from the world, and my mirror. I look in the mirror but I don’t SEE what looks back at me. Too frightening. Too unnerving. What if I don’t like what I see? I have spent too many years telling myself how much I like myself to risk it.
Sounds like I’m a Negative Nellie, right? I’m not really. I’m a positive person that just has to work at it…not because it’s difficult, just because I am surrounded by negativity. I cut myself off because I don’t want to get sucked into the negative vortex that is the world today.
I have wondered many times, especially over the past fifteen years or so if I have some undiagnosed mental or emotional condition. Bi-polar? Clinically depressed? Psychotic? Neurotic? All of the above? Of course I’ll never know because I would never admit to any of the symptoms. It would make me weak, and I am not weak. I am strong. I am woman. Hear me roar….with rage sometimes.
This journey of self exploration will be okay as long as I don’t look in the mirror. That’s where the liar lives. She doesn’t lie to anyone else…abhors it as a matter of fact. But she lies to me. There is no self doubt in the face I see …
‘This is gonna hurt’, she says with a smirk. ‘Hang on.’
offthecuffbyplnear 