I am fragile.
I never really looked at that until just recently when I was thinking why am I so angry at K? Why do I constantly shut down or want to shut everyone out? I am fragile, there is pain yet to be uncovered and I WANT TO THINK THERE IS NO MORE. If SO WHERE COULD IT HAVE BEEN FOR THE LAST 55 YEARS OF MY EXISTENCE HERE ON EARTH? I have been a co-dependent my whole life. If I do something, give something, be someone else, then maybe you will like me. It works the other way as well if I don't do something you don't want me to, then maybe I will be OK. Maybe if someone reads these words they will be helped or maybe they will see the light in their own life and then maybe they will like me.Can you see how this pervasive way of running my life has messed me up so badly?
OK so I had a rotten childhood and was beat and molested and all that but now the pain I deal with is me. Will I ever be worthy of love? Of happiness? Of just existing without the need to perform like some trained seal? You would never know it to look at me but those are the games going on in my psyche. All the time, or at least most of the time. Oh God I wish it were different but wishing it away won't work and unfortunately I know that and wish I didn't. I wish that I didn't crumble when someone is critical of me in any way. Here is a little taste of what has come to me recently.
Maybe 3 years ago I decided that I wanted an Appalachian dulcimer. One because it was supposed to be easier to learn that a Hammered Dulcimer which I also own. Now first you have to know that when I begin what I shall term "the hunt" I am obsessive with finding just the right thing the perfect item and all at the right price. It is sad to say that my life has consisted of many hunts and kills but not much follows after the adrenaline rush is over. I am actually all about the rush of obtaining and little about the follow through. So I began the hunt and lo and behold I spotted my quarry. I was able to make the purchase as a Christmas gift from my wife. I found a man in Texas that hand made dulcimers and would make them out of any wood you might desire. Well here was an opportunity to score a real prized possession. I mean I could pick the wood and the design for the holes and practically pick everything I wanted to design and Tom would make it that way in about 12 or so weeks for about $650.00. Something so beautiful that it could be passed down from generation to generation. (besides being obsessive and compulsive I am a bit of a romantic)
May 2007 came and lo and behold that was the month my instrument arrived. It was beautiful, in fact it was everything that I could have hoped it would be and as I showed it to my family, I got the oh it's nice honey and looks real pretty, what are we having for dinner? BLOW 1 When I recovered I went to play it and of course I know the basics but not enough to sound good and sure enough I got OH MY GOD IT IS NOT GOING TO SOUND LIKE THAT IS IT? Well BLOW 2. To my own shame I tell you this probably did not happen nearly as I have portrayed it but that is the way my soul heard it. I quietly packed it up and haven't picked it up again. It is a thing of beauty and I am so fragile that I could not take what was probably a throw-away line and meant nothing but to me it was like a poker as hot as hades entering my heart. I am fragile and I still don't know how to deal with life on life's terms. Any healthy person would have shrugged it off and said something like well that's your opinion now but just wait till I learn how to play. But I lost.
Recently my wife and I were at a show, (we sell at arts and crafts shows) , and my wife commented on a pair of earrings that I purchased there. She said something like You are getting back into your feminine streak again. Well I blew a gasket at her, how dare she say something like that to me, why i have been working hard at keeping myself clean and sober, holding those cross dressing demons away from my door, and she could say something so cruel? How could she? I was devastated. Have I mentioned that I am fragile? Another opinion and yet the pain was to much to bear so I lashed out at her and shut down everything. All I felt was the pain and I know she really didn't mean it the exact way I took it but the damage was done. No more would I let her in like that! Close the fortress doors and do not open them for any reason. I'm fragile and I didn't even know it!
