there are some things in life that you don’t let on are present in your head because they’re soft, tender things that are easily injured and we all know how callous and careless humans can be at times. the phrase used for such things is the title of this piece. i picked it up from someone i once knew and it has come in rather handy since.
i think about the things i want to do in this life and in truth, there really aren’t that many. mostly it’s places i want to see rather than things i want to be. i guess you could say i’m comfortable with who i am, even if i’m decidedly uncomfortable with how being who i am means certain things in this life seem cut off from me…. or me from them, it is hard to say which it is and i’ve given up trying to pretend it makes a difference.
the things that are close to the bone for me entail a small series of things that i often think most of the world has and doesn’t really ken the notion of someone who doesn’t. and when i think about it, sometimes, i wonder if i am irrevocably broken in certain ways because of the lacking.
there is a term they apply to ‘people like me’ who have had ‘those kinds of experiences’, but i don’t like the term and i don’t like or accept the pathology ‘they’ claim comes with it. mostly because my life entire is an example of the exception to those negative, derogatory rules.
but i admit, there are aspects of that label that do very much apply. i’d tell you more, but, as i said, it’s close to the bone. i don’t even mention the label. i think in some ways, i fear it may be true and perhaps i’m just not willing to admit it. fear, indeed. i remember how many years i spent waiting for ‘the insanity’ to show up. and now relieved i was when it seemed it wasn’t going to… and how, after that, i spent a good bit of time being frightened that maybe it had been here all along and i just didn’t see it.
there have always been enough people around me telling me this was the case. thankfully, most of them now have passed fully from my life.
i remember a certain someone, someone i thought cared for me, how one night, while drunk, they made it very, very clear that there was no doubt in their mind that i was both a lost cause and utterly “mental”. i never did tell them how that hurt. i should have. i think i might have at the end of it all, but by then, they neither were listening nor cared.
i’m thinking about it all tonight because here i am in this new place, this place i’ve tried so hard and so long to get to… and in the midst of all the happy for being here and all the positivity about setting up ‘home’ and living here and never moving again (!!), there’s this little thread of fear rippling and whispering all kinds of ‘what ifs’ and being very unrealistic indeed regarding timeframes and expectations.
practice helps smooth it all, of course. instead of being a nervous, stressed out wreck, i can listen to the thoughts pass through, nod at them and say, ‘yup, lookie there, all those thoughts’ and not have to let any of them actually land or sink roots into me.
which is a relief.
on the other hand… something amazing and special that i was really looking forward to exploring seems to have been the same illusory thing that it’s ever been. i’m trying not to let it bother me, but the fact is, it does bother me. i’m not going to go into details. it doesn’t really matter…. obviously. (yes, i suppose that is a pun of sorts, but i’m not going to explain that, either.)
when i settle, have work, and am back on even keel, i intend to get involved in local things. the arts, the ‘music scene’, and the local animal shelter most likely. i have been saying for the last few years that there are certain things i’m giving up on having in the rest of this life and it seems like i may finally be getting to the place where i can do more than mouth the words and cry myself to sleep at night belying the lipservice.
i might even manage it without becoming bitter. maybe. i do feel a bit acidic around the edges, but i suppose that’s to be expected. humans are human. good, bad, and indifferent. that includes me.
i started this piece because i wondered just how close to the bone i could go before i felt it. silly though, i feel it all the time. in such ways does the bored mind try to occupy itself, i suppose. i’d much rather a cuddle and whispers in the dark…. but that’s not happening.
ouch. close indeed.