A colleague of mine recently started conducting his exposure therapy experiment in the room next door to me. Soon, he became my friend. The first thing that made me really determined to befriend this boy was how raw he was. I found it hard to put a label to what it was that I saw in him. It was the transparency, clarity of mind and pure truth that just radiated from his pores. He was real. He was human, wore his flaws on his sleeve and said exactly what he thought. None of it was hurtful, it was simply the truth.We had many lengthy conversations and sure enough, he is probably one of the handful of people who really know who I am. And while that would usually make me crouch away and block the person off, I celebrated it instead. Though after every conversation we had, I felt exposed and like I was losing my sense of control over how he saw me, it felt great to finally let someone else make the decision as to whether or not they like me, rather than I play the part so perfectly that they have no choice but to be mesmerised by this unique, experienced, sensitive, hurt and healed persona that I have rigorously mastered. I would not describe meeting him as one of those moments that almost instantly change everything, rather an ongoing process. I have so much to learn from him. I want to learn to be so honest, and so raw, and I want the peace that comes from the heart because of telling the truth always. I want to learn how to live not lying to myself,and to expose myself to my fears in order to overcome them. Like my new friend, I want to be at one with myself.
One of our most recent conversations, I told my friend a lot of truths about me. I told him about my abusive upbringing, my journeys back and forth from the dark place to the light then the dark place again, and how I can't seem to escape the dark place anymore. I told him about my addictive behaviours, the personal elements in my life that I have perfectly under control. And as he began to conceptualize what I was saying, he said one word 'split'. When he said that word, it seemed like everything in my life that I was baffled by made sense. I love healthy eating but I binge obsessively on junk, I love exercise but I hate it, I love my partner but I choose to keep all our business seperate, i think it is okay to smack your kids but I am not okay with hitting children, so what exactly is my stance here? I can love and I can hate at the same time, I can change my mind at the drop of a hat, my emotions are not black or white, they are black AND white and that is why the inside of my mind is a living hell. I am a divided kingdom. I am chaos. The more I though about it, the sicker I felt. I am happy as long as I appear to have a good work ethic, but do I have a good work ethic? Am I happy to bum around when I should be working as long as I don't get caught? Yep! plain as day, I am. But I am also committed to providing my employer with the best standard of work! How can that be? And such is the truth with every aspect of my existence. I advocate food education, and 'let food by thy medicine', and that is where that fear comes from when I know I am about to binge, the fear that someone will be my shopping basket as I rush to the self-checkout in tears. Someone might expose that hipocrasya nd I cannot stand the thought of that. I am a vegetarian, but I have kicked a dog once because it licked my hands as I has typing an assignment. So really, who the fuck am I?
When my friend saw what the wrod 'split' did to me face, the blow to my heart that manifested itself in my stunned appearnce, he proveeded to say 'and who else has been split in your life?'. I didn't have an answer, but he did. And he was right. My dad. My family. My entire upbringing has been split. My dad bashed me to a pulp, but loved me so dearly, he told me all the time. I was trained to wear one face to him and his society to protect him from the shame of who I truy was, and another face to the rest of the world. The family was trained to appear happy, when everything was breaking down. I was trained in my mind to disconnect, to transport myself to a safe place while my physical self recieved pain and punches and kicks and verbal abuse. That's why in my mind, I am able to travel, to live, to go to the beach in a swimsuit, to be happy..without actually doing any of it. I have already lived my perfect life. So I no longer do-I just think. My family were trianed to lie to me so that I could disclose my secrets to them so that they could later be used against me, I was constantly in survival mode, constantly split between the truth and lies that now they have become one, I no longer know the truth and I no longer know the lies, they have fused into an utter grey mess, morphed into my very soul...
The second I realized this, the weight of the world that i carried on my shoulders felt as though it had quadrupled. I am the only problem in my life. I am so far fucked, I have stopped myself from being my best every time.I want to be a psychologist because I want to help people and because I want the money and the status.....How can one person be so many people? And where do you start when you know you have to win the war within yourself...who'c going to win? The athiest, the believer, the lover, the hater, the virgin, the whore, the martyr, the victim, the good, the evil, the truth, the lies...
