Reality Check

...all of those seemingly glorified ideals aside, I believe that there is just as much "truth" in the fumbling about of everyday human experience. In fact, most of the human experience...or at least my own...is rooted in perpetual fumbling. One could even argue that those who lock themselves up in a box with their values, opinions and ideals set in stone, and who avoid "mistakes" at all costs and refuse to experience anything that might pierce their safety bubble are actually farther away from "truth" than those who choose to experience any and everything and write off painful experiences as "learning opportunities."

I'm starting to feel a bit lost in the alley of these two towering lifestyles. I've always considered myself to be the latter, but I'm starting to realize that my pre and post-adolescent lifestyle of experimentation, indulgence, and melancholic exploration has now turned me into a somewhat numb, overly-cautious and...dare I say...cynical person. I think I may have gone about things backwards...

Perhaps the pains of my early childhood led me to seek these heightened experiences of drugs, angry and rebellious actings-out, toxic/abusive relationships, and everything that seemed to come as a result of all-of-the-above at an earlier age than most. I vaguely remember a momentary lapse of what seemed to be clarity at age 16 while dancing at a giant warehouse in the middle of Downtown Oakland (Home Base, for you Bay Area kids) at 3am, surrounded by 30,000 people who were on just as many (if not far more) hits of X as I was, while making out and profusely rubbing (in that way that people do while rolling on X) a guy who would shortly thereafter get me pregnant....I remember thinking ever so briefly: "this is not going to make anything in my life better."

Needless to say, countless weekends of dropping pills with various concoctions of chemicals and hallucinogens, sleeping with a douchebag guy who I never even liked to begin with, and dancing to trance music didn't really get me anywhere other than depressed, cracked out, freakishly skinny, knocked up and an "F" in Algebra. But who's to say that having that experience...or more importantly, coming through it alive and intact...didn't contribute to my overall awareness of my own truth?

In fact, having various experiences such as this one (and those that caused me to indulge in such a way) are what have led me to dig deeper, to pull myself out of the proverbial hole I have dug, and come out on top all the wiser...if not moreso. I pride myself on the things I've experienced...those that were painful and destructive just as much as those that were healing and constructive. That is the basis for my "spirituality" I guess...seeing all of the things we experience as being one in the same...part of the same journey and equally valid.

I have to say, though, that the past year or two have been quite isolating for me because of where I stand in my process right now. The crazy thing about life is that we really do go through it alone. Most of us are lucky enough to have solid people join us at various points along the way, but for those of us to choose to venture off on our own at any point will inevitably face the reality that -eventually- the people who are in our lives (even those who are particularly close to us) will never really know us in our entirety. If we leave home, then we are fated to love and share our lives with people who didn't know us when...

It's a strange feeling.

I am an only child, so growing up I didn't have siblings to commiserate with or lean on or learn from. I consider it a gift in many ways because I feel that my forced independence has taught me to depend on myself to get through whatever life feeds me. But the people who have come into my life in the past couple of years have gotten to know a very fragmented version of me...and it can feel a bit isolating. I often feel very misunderstood.

This notion struck me suddenly several days ago when a guy who I was fortunate enough to have in my bed and in my company every so briefly, told me that he had seen me as being very innocent. Maybe some girls would smirk and swoon and feel a sense of contentment at hearing this, but it made me feel slighted, insulted, and so very alone. Needless to say, the guy wouldn't have anything on which to base his knowledge of my past, but it made me feel like I needed to justify my life experiences with a long-winded run down of the past 25 years.

I didnt subject him to it, but it left me feeling a bit hollow.

It's strange to have come out of so many years of pain and destruction...gone through an intense process of working through it all...found some peace of mind....and then be seen as being innocent, as if I had never experienced all of the things that led me to become more "together," more "mature," and more cautious.

But who do you choose to explain yourself to? Who do you choose to tell your story to so that they may better understand and appreciate you as a complete person and not just someone who has only been alive for the short period of time during which they've been in your world?

...the ones who ask, i guess.