If That Were True – Are You Good With Computers?

I was involved with a talk about how we think or why we feel the way I do. And then it came down to the parents.
As if to ask, “where were they” or “why didn’t they talk to me about any of this.” and I have news about this. We all have our own programs running in the background.
No one can see through my eyes and no one can see through yours.
We have all been led by our own perception. We have all been prey to our own misperceptions as well.
Plus, there is a projection, or in the case of our parents who overlooked our life from the beginning and the early ears, perhaps they were lost too or maybe they lost to their own misperceptions as well.

In the case of my parents (or yours), I can say that maybe they didn’t know what to do or say. Maybe they failed in their own ways and the projection of their fears or worries or ideas and beliefs were misdirected or misinterpreted by us.
That could be true.
Maybe my parents tried to reach me as much as they could – and yes, perhaps I was unreachable. I I could say that I was beyond unreachable, especially when I was younger.
Maybe I was inconsolable too. Maybe I lacked the language or the words to explain myself.
Besides, I swore that no one else could possibly understand who I was. No one could understand the way that I thought or how I felt.
How could they?
I was not a topic in some after-school special on television.
I was real. I had real fears and unfortunate traumas.
I was moving through stages of different realizations about myself. I was uncomfortable and awkward. But more, I was always losing myself to these wild comparisons. This allowed my thoughts to degrade me and yes, I lost to the assumptions and the biases which I was trained to have.

My best estimation suggested that this was “me.”
I was the problem. I put the word “me” into quotes to emphasize my point which is this:
If peace is a mindset and if thoughts were always true and opinions were always fact, the world would be a very scary place to someone who has no confidence.
The world would be a disaster to those who swore on their own misconceived ugliness, which was me (at best) for a very long time.

If that were true and if it were true that peace was a mindset; and if we based our life on insecure assumptions or if we based our life on worries, or allowed ourselves to listen to the expecting whispers of the impending dooms, which are always on their way – and if we assume that the next bad thing is right around the corner, just waiting to catch us when we smile, then how could anyone find peace within themselves?

I have said this to you before. We are a compilation of opinions, experiences, biases, trained assumptions, and not to mention memory which is the real bitch of it all because memory can lie to us.
Memories can be altered by interpretation and can either be amplified, dramatized or changed and distorted by our perception of events. This is not a true or false thing because it has been stated many times to me – perception is not truth – it’s only truth to the person who perceives this to be true.

We are a complex computer.
This is how I see it. Only I’ve never been very good with computers.
I would say that my computer skills are bad at best and severely outdated.
We are a series of different files and too many hardwired misconceptions; and like any computer, we have vulnerabilities. We can be susceptible to different intrusions that leave us open to mental viruses.
This is what happens to a computer when we download a contaminated file.
Right?
These intrusions or viruses come along to corrupt our files, which essentially can ruin our memories by infiltrating our emotional storage.

I lived most of my life (if not all) with the belief that something was “wrong” with me.
I’m ugly. I dress funny.
I have a crooked smile.
One eye is shaped differently from the other.
My teeth are not perfect.
I’ve never had a “good body” so-to-speak.
I never assumed anyone could or would understand these items in my head. I was always afraid to reach out for help. I was afraid that if I did, I would be too far gone to recover.
I was afraid to tell anyone the things that ruined my dreams. Not to mention, when we talk about communicating or when we talk about reaching out for help, in most cases, people fail to have the language to explain themselves. We lack the words—and while we might know what this means or looks like in their our head, the challenge is explaining this to someone else, or fearing the rejection that some how, we are this crazed oddity, too pitiful or sad.

I never dared to do this. To reach out – I mean.
I always had a sense of distrust in outside interpretation. Plus, therapists are in it for the money – at least this is what I thought. They’re people too, which means they judge and they have biases too. Not to mention, I was afraid that once my session broke, a therapist would go in the other room and either laugh at me or tell someone else about my joke of a life.
Then again, perhaps a symptom of these mental viruses is that the virus corrupts our interpretation as well – mine included, leaving us to either be untrusting, or doubtful, or otherwise, we are lost in the inward ideas that our sense of terminal uniqueness is all to distancing. This means no one gets it … and because we see it this way, we are too far gone to allow us to connect with someone who actually understands.

I write this subjectively as well as openly because as I work my way through the ranks of this so-called life, and as I try and make my way to the center stage or to find my place in the sun, wherever this may be, know that as different as we are, we are all equipped with core similarities.

If it were true that peace is a mindset and if peace is really nothing more than a thought process; then it would also be true that our corrupted thoughts and our contaminated memories need to be cleared. We have to rid our files from their inaccuracies and, somehow, same as our computer, we need to defragment our files.
We need to clean our hard drive. We have to clear out the contaminations and stop the viruses before our system crashes to the point where there is no return.

Somehow – we have all believed in lies.
We have all be stolen, more than once.
We have all listened to the different directions of the so-called social norms. We have been fooled and tricked by commercialized beauty – we have allowed this to be enough that we question our own worth and so, we lose our own beauty to a basis of inaccurate comparison.
I have always waned to be beautiful.
However –
We are rejection sensitive. We lose ourselves to the ideas of outside influence. Whether we see ourselves as desirable or otherwise, we have all been inundated by the contaminated files and the corrupted ideas of fads or fashions.
We have all “drank the Kool-Aid” so-to-speak.
We have all listened to and followed the parrots of the world who mimic what they were taught and next, they preach this as if this was their truth – so, they passed down their lies and the imperfect lessons they were taught, like a torch in some dysfunctional relay race.

Well –
I’m tired of this race.
(Are you?)

It’s okay to pull away from this.
I know it is.

But can I tell you why I had a hard time pulling away?
I worried about things like:
What if no one misses me?
What if I go and find myself alone?
What if I am even more alone than I feel when I was around the wrong people?
What would I do with myself?
Who would I be?
Would anyone care?
Or would I simply dissolve into some kind of dust or ash, or otherwise fade into the nothingness and just be forgotten?
I thought this way for a very long time.
I still do (sometimes).

If a large part of our mental concepts stem from who we are and if our identity is everything – who would I be if I chose to stand up and walk away?
Would I be able to walk out the door without looking over my shoulder?
Could I walk away without looking back to see if anyone was reaching out to me to stay?

I have practiced my goodbye speech more times than anyone could possibly count.
I have rehearsed them in my mind, over and over.
I’ve performed them in the mirror. I have practiced my responses in my head. In fact, I have done this to the point where I literally worked myself up into crisis mode. I’d amp myself up to the point where I felt like I did when I was a kid at school and the angst was the same as if I was about to get into a fight at 3:00 in the field behind the gymnasium.

I have come to the simple understanding that there is nothing wrong with me, per se. However, I understand that like a computer with countless files, I have different corruptions and contaminations that degrade and ruin my systems capacity.

So . . .
If that were true, and if it were true that I have been stuck in my thoughts, or if I allowed myself to be held hostage by the deception of my perception, and if that were true, and in the case of myself against me, then it would also be true that I need to find a way to rid myself of these contaminations.

But how?
1) I can replace thought with action.
2) I can seek help
3) I can find the right people to speak with
4) I can stop listening to everyone’s opinion
5) I can understand that my perception of self needs to be updated (just like my thinking)
6) It’s like the old saying: Practice makes perfect, which means I have to incorporate some kind of daily routine maintenance – otherwise, I can lose my files to some inaccurate idea or assumption and once more, my so-called hard drive will become inundated with corrupted files and contaminated data.

I am exactly like you in the sense that I have a core. I have a background. I have a historical logbook in my head – and it’s still counting! I have both necessary and unneeded files and like any system, I could use a reboot.
Shut off the power button for a while – just go.
I have to allow myself a minute to breathe – to disconnect from the invasive technologies which we all find ourselves victim to. And we all know this.
I say this because technology is a necessary evil.
This is everywhere now.
We are connected by text messages, cell phones, apps, emails and some kind of computer-like technology.

We live in a world where more than half of the people who live with emotional struggles or mental health challenges will refuse to reach out for help.
But why?
In part, this is because of a belief system which corrupts our thinking and says, “NOBODY UNDERSTANDS!”
Or – “NO ONE CARES!!”
At least not really.
In the games of better you than me –
we lose to the assumption of being either thrown under the bus or tossed into the fire, just so someone else can stay warm.
No one really understands
And guess what . . .
I probably don’t understand either.

Maybe people lose to the frustration that comes when we have to explain ourselves. But at the same time – I don’t have to understand you and you don’t have to understand me either.
This does not mean rejection nor does this assign anyone the category of better or worse.
I’m me. You’re you.
We are us
And I love us (just so you know).

I practiced too many speeches where I planned to walk away – and in fairness, I can say that I have pulled this off on a few occasions.
However, we lose to our own thoughts.
The mind is a trap . . .
SO –
Replace thoughts with action.
Find “the right” people to talk to.
Do not waste your breath with those who listen to respond instead of listening to hear you . . .
And me? Yes.
I’m guilty of that too.
I’ve listened to respond.
I did this because of my fears, or insecurities, or due to a sense of thinking that I was unworthy or about to be on the losing end of some inaccurate idea. I was afraid to be inadequate, unqualified, unlovable, ugly or in comparison to the so-called commercialized version of success – I judged myself too harshly. I lost to the misconceptions of self. Thus, I allowed my thoughts to implode or fold inward.
I folded in and this is what made it impossible for me to listen without judgement or worry – or more, I listened to respond yet the more I responded, the deeper I fell.

I will leave with this –

There are times when I would speak or say something or tell you how I felt – or there are times when my internal meter goes off, as if I can hear the last few things that I said or as if the words I said came out stupid or they were too idiotic.
I thought that I sounded like a fool. In fact, I thought I sounded like an idiot and I was so uncomfortable and so vulnerable or even humiliated that I would try to redeem myself by saying something else – only, this never works.
I would dig my hole deeper and deeper and eventually, I would be down so far and dug in so deep that there was no way out of this.

Sometimes, you have to kill the power and reboot the system.
Just like a computer, we need a hard restart.

I can’t say that my files are clear or without corruption or contamination, but I am working on this. I guess my problem is I’ve never been very good with computers.
Fortunately there’s help out there.
But this is what we have each other for . . . .

Right?