Hello Cage friends,
It's a new day, a new year and I am sure many are taking time to think back and reflect over the last year. Plan new resolutions and work at improving themselves.
Honestly I don't believe in New Years resolutions because today is any other day. I still had to work, I still need to take care of my life. Nothing is different about today, yesterday or tomorrow. Each day has as much potential as I can pack into it. Each day has all the potential to be the day that I choose my actions differently.
I am not planning any resolutions but I have goals that I've set for myself. They have been set months ago and have not been achieved yet and thus I will continue to work at what I need to in order to move closer to each of those goals.
What's on my list?
Find my will. Find my purpose. Find my place within the universe that I am required to be. Improve my finances. But there are a few million other things that I also am considering, fighting, managing, supporting, and working towards.
Last night a bit of clarity struck me.
I had a tough morning driving into work and driving home. I've recently found out something about myself and that happens to be that I have aphantasia. It is the inability to visualize within your mind. I'm currently trying to meditate and each morning when I wake up I shower, handle my animals, prepare for work and part of that is meditating in the morning. I reached a dark thought that all of the work going into meditating and practicing was "pointless" because I can't visualize. I will explain in a minute but the key concept here was the word "pointless". When my mind latched onto that notion my entire energy dipped. I started seeing everything negatively and my drive into work was spent spiraling. The funny part was once at work I got distracted, had some different events occur that radically improved my mood and then once again on the long drive home I delved into my brain and spun around spewing negativity because it was "pointless".
So! I have managed to pull myself out of this funk but a few critical things had to occur for that to happen.
I pondered my place in the universe. Where am I supposed to be? What can I do there? How will I know when I find my purpose and how will that affect understanding my will?
All of it, seemed impossible. The purpose of my meditation was to help locate these things for me. But meditation is now "pointless" because I can't visualize. What I mean by that is this. When you close your eyes and think about something you see everyday. Your shower, your friends, your family, or even simpler a red triangle. When I close my eyes I simply stare into the blackness that is the back of my eyelids. I can THINK about a red triangle. A memory of what a red triangle is will become the focus of my thought but no magical red object in the shape of a triangle will fill my mind. It remains black. When I think of my mother's face I recognize that I am thinking of her, but no image of her body, face, features or any image becomes apparent. Same with imagining the sun. I know what it looks like, I understand what a sunrise is, I've witnessed them and can recall from memory that I have. But it's not a visual. It's like playing a text based game such as Zork. You approach a cliff and yet no cliff appears and you may do whatever but nothing actually happens. It's frustrating. It's defeating. It's overwhelming sometimes. These are all the things that "CAN BE".
So I felt like I lost the ability to even find my will because the tool I'm using to find it doesn't actually exist for me. That isn't entirely true, it just means that I need to search other avenues to compensate for what I don't have. It's not over. It's not the end, I just need to accept and rotate my approach. I need a new perspective.
As I drove home from work a few other ideas popped into my head and once I got home I realized a few things.
So who am I? Well I have some unfortunate but very fortunate news. Part of who I am CAN BE a selfish, lying, addict.
First off I have a very addictive personality. I struggle with use of drugs when I have them around me, I even have a difficult time exhibiting self control. Example. Purchasing a bag of chips from Costco. You know those giant bags of All Dressed chips meant to feed a family or an army? Well once I open that bag I will sit and eat until I tear my mouth and rip into the edges of the soft tissue. I could pour some into a bowl and keep it for a week, or I can finish it in a single sitting. The issue is, I would rather choose to consume it all in one go. Same goes with consuming and watching Netflix. I can choose to sit down and do absolutely very little with my time except to watch episode after episode, and binge shows such that I can finish seasons on my weekends. Now, back to the drugs and the chips. The only way that I can reasonably stop myself (because I know who I am) and the will power to hold myself away from absolutely devoting all of my energy into consuming those products is to NOT purchase them. My will power has to stop me before I bring the chips home, or before I decide to spend money on mushrooms or cannabis. Because once it's purchased and inside my home, I want to spend every minute smoking, taking mushrooms, eating the bag until its all consumed. I am an addict. I am addicted to so many unproductive vices that hold no value in my life. But I lie to myself and those around me touting how "beneficial" they Can BE. There is some truth to that though. There are moments when I have used cannabis appropriately. But not often. There are moments when I've held restraint and used a bowl to portion out a small amount of chips. I had to choose that action though, I had to make that intentional choice. It hasn't occurred on many instances for me though. Because I usually give in to my unnecessary wants and desires.
I had a moment where I lied to my friend on an extremely critical issue and boundary that she had set in her life. So here's where it gets interesting. I CAN BE a liar. I can choose to be dishonest, I can find excuses and reasons to justify my actions. I CAN expunge that what I am doing isnt wrong. That what I'm doing isn't breaching trust, that my lies are harmless and not a big deal. But I lied over and over in my past relationships. I hid things from those important to me for years at a time, holding onto secrets maintaining the elaborate ruse to keep everything from falling apart. Surprise surprise when it catches up to you and dismantles all you have been working to create. I sat on my couch last night and recognized that apart of who I am is a selfish, lying addict. I CAN CHOOSE to let that be apart of who I am. I CAN CHOOSE to destroy my integrity. Break my promises. I can let my lies take hold over me and dismantle what I'm doing.
OR!!!
I can take a moment and recognize who I am. I can see myself authentically. I can admit to my faults and CAN BE a better person. So instead of letting my lies steep inside my relationships I decided to take hold of a new perspective. I'm not broken. I'm working with some tools that don't operate the way they should though, and recognizing that I need to willingly, intentionally, and honestly move forward in such a way that I do not succumb to my addictions. That I don't resort to lying. That I don't hold my interests above someone else's when it comes to matters of breaching their hard limits.
I made a promise to always inform my friend when I was using drugs, such that she would know I was in an altered state of mind. The thing is she knew. I don't hide it well. It's not something that I am capable of smuggling past her. But the worst affront is that I lied to myself saying that it wasn't a big deal. Breaking my word, destroying my integrity, losing faith in myself caused deep seated anguish that I didn't recognize because I lied to myself. It took admitting the truth to set me free.
When I recognized and saw who I CAN BE, I realized it's the same issue with my aphantasia. I still need to meditate, I just need to approach the situation differently. I still need to hold to my values and I need to allow myself to work in different ways such that I do not allow myself to breach the trust placed in me. Such that I don't go back ON MY OWN WORD. Because if she ever loses faith in what I am saying then the relationship is lost. I've reached that point in my marriage. It got to such a degraded place that my ex could not believe any words coming out of my mouth. I never want to reach that space again.
So what did I do about it? Well I saw myself honestly, authentically. I acknowledged the demons I have deep inside me and I choose to admit they existed. I shone a light on them and gave them no place to hide. Then I told my friend about how I had lied to her, and how I had broken her trust, destroyed my integrity and breached one of her hard limits.
Through all of this when I saw myself, and saw my weakness, do you know what I experienced? An immediate lightening of the weight holding me down. Simply seeing myself released the weight of negativity that had been holding me in place. The first step is to recognize within yourself who you are. Admit it. Then look to see how you can combat those broken tools that don't work the way they should. In my case, that meant owning up to my actions and my choices. It meant choosing honesty. No matter what retribution I may have to pay. Because I choose to lie. I choose to give in to my deceit. I choose to lie to myself and inadvertently work at undermining what I have been working so hard to create. I need to pay the piper as they say, and I will do so willingly.
I hope that you all are well, while we still exist within this time of crisis. Thank you for taking the time to read my words and I hope that you learn from my mistakes and my choices. I hope you find fulfillment in your journey and work at becoming a better version of yourself each day.
