Had a huge realization the other day. Like watching as an entire wing of the mansion light up.
I don't recall the first thought, or memory, only cluing in as I saw the first job I had in HR, working for a huge clothing corporation in NYC. Then I saw a series of old boyfriends' faces flash. And a picture of my job in Hiveworld.
And then I got it.
BAM.
First wave of seeing: Instead of accepting, being where I was, I projected forward into a realm of fantasy so fantastic that I didn't want to be anywhere else. It didn't matter that what was occurring NOW was so often pretty awful - be it a friend who lied to me, a job that sucked the life out of me, a mate who took enjoyment from causing me pain - what I focused on was how it COULD BE, if only I tried hard enough, if only the other person realized what they were doing and chose to do the right thing.
Second wave: It was a survival strategy from my childhood, with one parent abusive, an addict, mentally ill, the other distant, unreachable, checked out, manipulative. I disappeared into books, then tv and movies, until finally they were much more real than reality. I took my cues on how to dress, how to behave, what to expect from people, situations, life, from them - a rather insane mix of Man's Search For Meaning and Desperately Seeking Susan.
Third wave: It'd be easy to judge it all -as a time suck, or a huge swath of my living under deep delusion - but the truth of it is that it was a fun way to live most of the time. It's all delusion anyway, and what I did was just make it Brighter and Louder and More Dramatic and WOW. Instead of becoming a depressed shut-in, someone who closed into themselves in a dull retreat, I bought a convertible and rode around in it with my shirt off and a sparkly bra on, thinking about how I was going to save the world with lovelovelove and hoochiecoochie dancing. Yeah, there was a lot of Down to follow the Up. But, hands down, it was a heck of a ride . . .
Sure, part of it was youth, and a part of this realization is simply growing older. But mostly it's about how I see things as they are now. (Even as I struggle with what to do with that knowing, how to live out my life with folks who can't see.) And also how I don't hope for More so much as deeper and deeper layers of knowing that All Is Well.
The fantasies, the hope, still runs. But it's not about some sort of Living Large life anymore. It's so stylized, so primal and elemental it's like what a kindergartner imagines: living on a farm with a hundred animals that all live in head-bitey harmony and we dance under the full moon; traveling to other planets to meet the aliens who seeded our world; eating pie every day, all day and being fit and healthy. Simple yet weird stuff that flashes through my mind and then is gone.
I really do think hope is the killer. Much worse than it's cousin, fear. At least with fear, you know something bad and unphun is going down. With hope, you can float in a grape-flavored disco bubble for decades before you realize you've been scammed.
So yeah. F*ck hope. What's happening right now, and what do you know to be true?
